Quote

Where knowledge is a duty, ignorance is a crime.

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
Knowledge
Ignorance
Crime
Duty

More quotes by Thomas Paine

Image
Titles are but nicknames, and every nickname is a title. The thing is perfectly harmless in itself, but it marks a sort of foppery in the human character, which degrades it.
Thomas Paine
Image
It is a general idea, that when taxes are once laid on, they are never taken off.
Thomas Paine
Image
The representative system of government is calculated to produce the wisest laws, by collecting wisdom where it can be found.
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
THE WORD OF GOD IS THE CREATION WE BEHOLD: And it is in this word, which no human invention can counterfeit or alter, that God speaketh universally to man.
Thomas Paine
Image
No country can be called free which is governed by an absolute power and it matters not whether it be an absolute royal power or an absolute legislative power, as the consequences will be the same to the people.
Thomas Paine
Image
The American constitutions were to liberty, what a grammar is to language: they define its parts of speech, and practically construct them into syntax
Thomas Paine
Image
From whence, then, could arise the solitary and strange conceit that the Almighty, who had millions of worlds equally dependant on His protection, should quit the care of all the rest, and come to die in our world, because, they say, one man and one woman had eaten an apple?
Thomas Paine
Image
I do not believe in the creed professed by any church that I know of. Each of these churches accuse the other of unbelief and for my part, I disbelieve them all.
Thomas Paine
Image
Some people can be reasoned into sense, and others must be shocked into it.
Thomas Paine
Image
The story of the whale swallowing Jonah, though a whale is large enough to do it, borders greatly on the marvelous but it would have approached nearer to the idea of a miracle if Jonah had swallowed the whale.
Thomas Paine
Image
Man did not enter society to be worse off, or to have fewer rights, but rather to have those rights better secured
Thomas Paine
Image
Compassion, the fairest associate of the heart.
Thomas Paine
Image
The Bible: a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalise mankind.
Thomas Paine
Image
Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself.
Thomas Paine
Image
It is only by the exercise of reason that man can discover God.
Thomas Paine
Image
The New Testament, they tell us, is founded upon the prophecies of the Old if so, it must follow the fate of its foundation.
Thomas Paine
Image
Mystery is the antagonist of truth. It is a fog of human invention, that obscures truth, and represents it in distortion.
Thomas Paine
Image
EVERY national church or religion has established itself by pretending some special mission from God, communicated to certain individuals. The Jews have their Moses the Christians their Jesus Christ, their apostles and saints and the Turks their Mahomet as if the way to God was not open to every man alike.
Thomas Paine
Image
It is the direction and not the magnitude which is to be taken into consideration.
Thomas Paine