Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Men should not petition for rights, but take them
Thomas Paine
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Petition
Petitions
Rights
Take
Men
More quotes by Thomas Paine
Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil in its worst state, an intolerable one.
Thomas Paine
A man may write himself out of reputation when nobody else can do it.
Thomas Paine
The people of America are a people of property almost every man is a freeholder.
Thomas Paine
It is only by the exercise of reason that man can discover God.
Thomas Paine
It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.
Thomas Paine
The Bill of Rights should contain the general principles of natural and civil liberty. It should be to a community what the eternal laws and obligations of morality are to the conscience. It should be unalterable by any human power.
Thomas Paine
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
There is something absurd in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island.
Thomas Paine
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
If those to whom power is delegated do well, they will be respected if not, they will be despised.
Thomas Paine
...the individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.
Thomas Paine
It is the direction and not the magnitude which is to be taken into consideration.
Thomas Paine
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
When my country, into which I had just set my foot, was set on fire about my ears, it was time to stir. It was time for every man to stir.
Thomas Paine
An army of principles will penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot.
Thomas Paine
Ignorance is of a peculiar nature once dispelled, it is impossible to reestablish it. It is not originally a thing of itself, but is only the absence of knowledge and though man may be kept ignorant, he cannot be made ignorant.
Thomas Paine
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
When it becomes necessary to do a thing, the whole heart and soul should go into the measure, or not attempt it.
Thomas Paine
Religion is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize humankind and, for my part, I sincerely detest it as I detest everything that is cruel.
Thomas Paine
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
