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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.

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
Justice
Providing
Moral
Invented
Age
Superior
Superiors
Courtly
Obligation
Supplying
Poverty
Extravagance
Hold
Infancy
Wants
Helpless

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Take away from Genesis the belief that Moses was the author, on which only the strange believe that it is the word of God has stood, and there remains nothing of Genesis but an anonymous book of stories, fables, and traditionary or invented absurdities, or of downright lies.
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Lay then the axe to the root, and teach governments humanity. It is their sanguinary punishments which corrupt mankind.
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Beware the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry.
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Prophesying is lying professionally.
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I draw my idea of the form of government from a principle in nature, which no art can overturn, viz. that the more simple any thing is, the less liable it is to be disordered and the easier repaired when disordered.
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Those who expect to reap the blessing of freedom must undertake to support it.
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Arms, like laws, discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe and preserve order.
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The idea of hereditary legislators is as inconsistent as that of hereditary judges, or hereditary juries and as absurd as an hereditary mathematician, or an hereditary wise man and as ridiculous as an hereditary poet-laureat.
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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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I call not upon a few, but upon all: not on this state or that state, but on every state up and help us lay your shoulders to the wheel better have too much force than too little, when so great an object is at stake.
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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.
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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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The instant formal government is abolished, society begins to act. A general association takes place, and common interest produces common security.
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No man is prejudiced in favor of a thing, knowing it to be wrong. He is attached to it on the belief of its being right and when he sees it is not so, the prejudice will be gone.
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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.
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