Quote

The burden of the national debt consists not in its being so many millions, or so many hundred millions, but in the quantity of taxes collected every year to pay the interest. If this quantity continue the same, the burden of the national debt is the same to all intents and purposes, be the capital more or less.

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
Every
Hundred
Quantity
Years
Pay
Consists
Millions
Capital
Year
Burden
Interest
Debt
Purpose
National
Intents
Less
Continue
Collected
Many
Taxes
Purposes

More quotes by Thomas Paine

Image
The times that tried men's souls are over-and the greatest and completest revolution the world ever knew, gloriously and happily accomplished.
Thomas Paine
Image
One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests.
Thomas Paine
Image
To possess ourselves of a clear idea of what government is, or ought to be, we must trace it to its origin.
Thomas Paine
Image
It is from the power of taxation being in the hands of those who can throw so great a part of it from their own shoulders, that it has raged without a check.
Thomas Paine
Image
Suspicion and persecution are weeds of the same dunghill, and flourish best together.
Thomas Paine
Image
Mingling religion with politics may be disavowed and reprobated by every inhabitant of America.
Thomas Paine
Image
They took care to represent government as a thing made up of mysteries, which only themselves understood, and they hid from the understanding of the nation, the only thing that was beneficial to know, namely, that government is nothing more than a national association acting on the principles of society.
Thomas Paine
Image
Civilization, or that which is so called, has operated two ways to make one part of society more affluent and the other part more wretched than would have been the lot of either in a natural state.
Thomas Paine
Image
Let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarcy, that in America the law is King. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King and there ought to be no other.
Thomas Paine
Image
We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in.
Thomas Paine
Image
A single legislature, on account of the superabundance of its power, and the uncontrolled rabidity of its execution, becomes as dangerous to the principles of liberty as that of a despotic monarch.
Thomas Paine
Image
Small islands, not capable of protecting themselves, are the proper objects for kingdoms to take under their care but there is something absurd, in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island.
Thomas Paine
Image
Christianity is the strangest religion ever set up, for it committed a murder upon Jesus in order to redeem mankind from the sin of eating an apple.
Thomas Paine
Image
Government has no right to make itself a party in any debates respecting the principles or mode of forming or of changing, constitutions. It is not for the benefit of those who exercise the powers of government, that constitutions, and the governments issuing from them, are established.
Thomas Paine
Image
The end of all political associations is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man and these rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance of oppression.
Thomas Paine
Image
Immediate necessity makes many things convenient, which if continued would grow into oppressions.
Thomas Paine
Image
A man may write himself out of reputation when nobody else can do it.
Thomas Paine
Image
Where there are no distinctions there can be no superiority perfect equality affords no temptation.
Thomas Paine
Image
That there are men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the quarrels of Nations is as shocking as it is true.
Thomas Paine
Image
In the progress of politics, as in the common occurrences of life, we are not only apt to forget the ground we have travelled over, but frequently neglect to gather up experiences as we go.
Thomas Paine