Quote

Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance.

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
Men
Rest
Reign
Grows
Obey
Upon
Minds
Born
Importance
Others
Soon
Look
Early
Insolent
Looks
Mankind
Poisoned
Mind
Grow
Selected

More quotes by Thomas Paine

Image
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
Image
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.
Thomas Paine
Image
If any generation of men ever possessed the right of dictating the mode by which the world should be governed for ever, it was the first generation that existed and if that generation did it not, no succeeding generation can show any authority for doing it, nor can set any up.
Thomas Paine
Image
The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.
Thomas Paine
Image
The moral duty of man consists of imitatingthe moral goodness and beneficence of God,manifested in the creation, toward all His creatures.
Thomas Paine
Image
[A]ll churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim, are simply human inventions. They use fear to enslave us. They are a monopoly for power and profit.
Thomas Paine
Image
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
Image
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.
Thomas Paine
Image
It is the direction and not the magnitude which is to be taken into consideration.
Thomas Paine
Image
The graceful pride of truth knows no extremes, and preserves, in every latitude of life, the right-angled character of man.
Thomas Paine
Image
Oppression is often the consequence, but seldom or never the means of riches and tho' avarice will preserve a man from being necessitously poor, it generally makes him too timorous to be wealthy.
Thomas Paine
Image
But if objects for gratitude and admiration are our desire, do they not present themselves every hour to our eyes?
Thomas Paine
Image
What at first was plunder assumed the softer name of revenue.
Thomas Paine
Image
Titles do not count with posterity.
Thomas Paine
Image
And when we view a flag, which to the eye is beautiful, and to contemplate its rise and origin inspires a sensation of sublime delight, our national honor must unite with our interests to prevent injury to the one, or insult to the other.
Thomas Paine
Image
Man did not make the earth, and though he had a natural right to occupy it, he had no right to locate as his property in perpetuity, any part of it.
Thomas Paine
Image
From the east to the west blow the trumpet to arms! Through the land let the sound of it flee Let the far and the near all unite, with a cheer, In defense of our Liberty Tree.
Thomas Paine
Image
For the fate of Charles the first, hath only made kings more subtle — not more just.
Thomas Paine
Image
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.
Thomas Paine
Image
The Book of Job and the 19th Psalm, which even the Church admits to be more ancient than the chronological order in which they stand in the book called the Bible, are theological orations conformable to the original system of theology.
Thomas Paine