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An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws.

Thomas Paine

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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
Laws
Dangerous
Liberty
Avidity
Law
Misinterpret
Best
Punish
Even
Stretch
Always
Libertarian
Men
Leads

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... in free countries the law ought to be King and there ought to be no other.
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Is it more probable that nature should go out of her course, or that a man should tell a lie? We have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course but we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told in the same time.
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And as to you, Sir, treacherous in private friendship and a hypocrite in public life, the world will be puzzled to decide whether you are an apostate or an impostor whether you have abandoned good principles, or whether you ever had any.
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The reformation was preceded by the discovery of America, as if the Almighty graciously meant to open a sanctuary to the persecuted in future years, when home should afford neither friendship nor safety.
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Government is a necessary evil
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Time makes more converts than reason.
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Where there are no distinctions there can be no superiority perfect equality affords no temptation.
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Natural rights are those which always appertain to man in right of his existence. Of this kind are all the intellectual rights, or rights of the mind, and also all those rights of acting as an individual for his own comfort and happiness, which are not injurious to the rights of others.
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The essential psychological requirement of a free society is the willingness on the part of the individual to accept responsibility for his life. - Edith Packer When the government fears the people, it is liberty. When the people fear the government, it is tyranny.
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Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.
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How necessary it is at all times to watch against the attempted encroachment of power, and to prevent its running to excess.
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Tears may soothe the wounds they cannot heal.
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The greatest characters the world has known, have rose on the democratic floor. Aristocracy has not been able to keep a proportionate pace with democracy.
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The Book of Job and the 19th Psalm, which even the Church admits to be more ancient than the chronological order in which they stand in the book called the Bible, are theological orations conformable to the original system of theology.
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Every person of learning is finally his own teacher.
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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.
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The moral duty of man consists of imitatingthe moral goodness and beneficence of God,manifested in the creation, toward all His creatures.
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Titles are like a magicians wand which circumscribe human facility and prevent us from living the lives of man.
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If there was ever a just war since the world began, it is this in which America is now engaged.
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Is it because you are sunk in the cruelty of superstition, or feel no interest in the honor of your Creator, that you listen to the horrid tales of the Bible, or hear them with callous indifference?
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