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Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all cases as the ages and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies.

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
Age
Graves
Free
Vanity
Tyrannies
Must
Tyranny
Insolent
Every
Ridiculous
Preceded
Generation
Presumption
Generations
Governing
Beyond
Grave
Cases
Ages

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Men did not make the earth... It is the value of the improvements only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property. ... Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds.
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Mystery is the antagonist of truth. It is a fog of human invention, that obscures truth, and represents it in distortion.
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It has been the political career of this man to begin with hypocrisy, proceed with arrogance, and finish with contempt
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The people of America are a people of property almost every man is a freeholder.
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There is a happiness in Deism, when rightly understood, that is not to be found inany other system of religion. All other systems have something in them that either shock our reason, or are repugnant to it, and man, if he thinks at all, must stifle his reason in order to force himself to believe them.
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To possess ourselves of a clear idea of what government is, or ought to be, we must trace it to its origin.
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All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
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A share in two revolutions is living to some purpose.
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But if objects for gratitude and admiration are our desire, do they not present themselves every hour to our eyes?
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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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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.
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It is unpleasant to see character throw itself away.
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We repose an unwise confidence in any government, or in any men, when we invest them officially with too much, or an unnecessary quantity of, discretionary power.
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When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to [profess] things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.
Thomas Paine
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The creation is the Bible of the Deist. He there reads, in the handwriting of the Creator himself, the certainty of His existence and the immutability of His power, and all other Bibles and Testaments are to him forgeries.
Thomas Paine
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Truth never envelops itself in mystery, and the mystery in which it is at any time enveloped is the work of its antagonist, and never of itself.
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It is not the nature of avarice to be satisfied with anything but money. Every passion that acts upon mankind has a peculiar mode of operation. Many of them are temporary and fluctuating they admit of cessation and variety. But avarice is a fixed, uniform passion.
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We hold the moral obligation of providing for old age, helpless infancy, and poverty is far superior to that of supplying the invented wants of courtly extravagance.
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If those to whom power is delegated do well, they will be respected if not, they will be despised.
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Death is not the monarch for the dead, but of the dying. The moment he obtains a conquest he loses a subject.
Thomas Paine