Quotes about Thomas Paine

It is the object only of war that makes it honorable. And if there was ever a just war since the world began, it is this in which America is now engaged.

When authors and critics talk of the sublime, they see not how nearly it borders on the ridiculous.

Let them call me a rebel and welcome. I feel no concern from it. But should I suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul.

To believe that God created a plurality of worlds, at least as numerous as what we call stars, renders the Christian faith at once little and ridiculous; and scatters it in the mind like feathers in the air.

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

Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the strongly-marked feature of all law-religions, or religions established by law.

This sort of absurd subterfuge, and this manner of speaking of the Almighty, as one would speak of a man, is consistent with nothing but the stupidity of the Bible.

As politicians we ought not so much to ground our hopes on the reasonableness of the thing we ask, as on the reasonableness of the person whom we ask it: who would expect discretion from a fool, candor from a tyrant, or justice from a villain?

I have always held it an opinion (making it also my practice) that it is better to obey a bad law, making use at the same time of every argument to shew its errors and procure its repeal, than forcibly to violate it; because the precedent of breaking a bad law might weaken the force, and lead to a discretionary violation, of those which are good.

Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible7 is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the Word of God.

Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.

Thomas Paine remains just one of innumerable Christian missionaries whose contributions to science have been denied recognition by men of science.