Quote

Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil in its worst state, an intolerable one.

Thomas Paine

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Thomas Paine
Age: 72 †
Born: 1737
Born: January 29
Died: 1809
Died: June 8
Author
Entrepreneur
Journalist
Opinion Journalist
Philosopher
Politician
Prosaist
Writer
Thetford
Norfolk
Best
Liberty
Conservatism
Even
Worst
Governing
State
Intolerance
Evil
Founding
War
Libertarian
Political
Conservative
Intolerable
States
Motivation
Anarchism
Government
Necessary
Anarchist

More quotes by Thomas Paine

Image
Virtue is not hereditary.
Thomas Paine
Image
Compassion, the fairest associate of the heart.
Thomas Paine
Image
The mind, in discovering truths, acts in the same manner as it acts through the eye in discovering objects when once any object has been seen, it is impossible to put the mind back to the same condition it was in before it saw it.
Thomas Paine
Image
Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifiying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity.
Thomas Paine
Image
Immediate necessity makes many things convenient, which if continued would grow into oppressions.
Thomas Paine
Image
Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man.
Thomas Paine
Image
Change of ministers amounts to nothing. One goes out, another comes in, and still the same measures, vices, and extravagances are pursued. It signifies not who is minister. The defect lies in the system. The foundation and superstructure of the government is bad. Prop it as you please, it continually sinks and ever will.
Thomas Paine
Image
The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.
Thomas Paine
Image
...Thomas did not believe the resurrection [John 20:25], and, as they say, would not believe without having ocular and manual demonstration himself. So neither will I, and the reason is equally as good for me, and for every other person, as for Thomas.
Thomas Paine
Image
It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving, it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.
Thomas Paine
Image
The art of publicity is a black art but it has come to stay, and every year adds to its potency.
Thomas Paine
Image
Public credit is suspicion asleep.
Thomas Paine
Image
The idea of hereditary legislators is as inconsistent as that of hereditary judges, or hereditary juries and as absurd as an hereditary mathematician, or an hereditary wise man and as ridiculous as an hereditary poet-laureat.
Thomas Paine
Image
The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason.
Thomas Paine
Image
It is the fable of Jesus Christ, as told in the New Testament, and the wild and visionary doctrine raised thereon, against which I contend. The story, taking it as it is told, is blasphemously obscene.
Thomas Paine
Image
The artificial noble shrinks into a dwarf before the noble of nature and in the few instances (for there are some in all countries) in whom nature, as by a miracle, has survived in aristocracy, those men despise it.
Thomas Paine
Image
We must be compelled to hold this doctrine to be false, and the old and new law called the Old and New Testament, to be impositions, fables and forgeries.
Thomas Paine
Image
That which we obtain too easily, we esteem too lightly.
Thomas Paine
Image
Taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes.
Thomas Paine
Image
To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.
Thomas Paine