Paine quotes:

Send

Robert Treat Paine was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. -- Treat Williams
I think Tom Paine is one of the greatest men that's ever lived. -- Richard Attenborough
The left no longer stands for common sense, as it did in the days of Tom Paine. -- Christopher Lasch
What created democracy was Thomas Paine and Shays' Rebellion, the suffragists and the abolitionists and on down through the populists and the labor movement, including the Wobblies. Tough, in your face people... Mother Jones, Woody Guthrie... Martin Luther King and Caesar Chavez. And now it's down to us. -- Jim Hightower
I never tire of reading Tom Paine. -- Abraham Lincoln
Thomas Paine needs no monument made with hands; he has erected a monument in the hearts of all lovers of liberty. -- Andrew Jackson
No society has gone the way of gulags or concentration camps by following the path of Spinoza and Einstein and Jefferson and Thomas Paine -- Christopher Hitchens
My stern chase after time is, to borrow a simile from Tom Paine, like the race of a man with a wooden leg after a horse. -- John Quincy Adams
I consider Paine our greatest political thinker. As we have not advanced, and perhaps never shall advance, beyond the Declaration and Constitution, so Paine has had no successors who extended his principles. -- Thomas A. Edison
In 'Common Sense' Paine flared forth with a document so powerful that the Revolution became inevitable. Washington recognized the difference, and in his calm way said that matters never could be the same again. -- Thomas A. Edison
He (Thomas Paine) saw oppression on every hand; injustice everywhere; hypocrisy at the altar; venality on the bench, tyranny on the throne; and with a splendid courage he espoused the cause of the weak against the strong -- Robert Green Ingersoll
Each man too is a tyrant in tendency, because he would impose his idea on others; and their trick is their natural defence. Jesuswould absorb the race; but Tom Paine or the coarsest blasphemer helps humanity by resisting this exuberance of power. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Many a person who could not comprehend Rousseau, and would be puzzled by Montesquieu, could understand Paine as an open book. He wrote with a clarity, a sharpness of outline and exactness of speech that even a schoolboy should be able to grasp. -- Thomas A. Edison
This is what historians usually do, quibble about cause and effect when the point is, there are times when the world is in flux and the right voice in the right place can move the world. Thomas Paine and Ben Franklin, for instance. Bismark. Lenin. -- Orson Scott Card
In January 1776, Thomas Paine issued 'Common Sense,' advocating independence from Great Britain. -- Mike Crapo
Without the pen of Paine, the sword of Washington would have been wielded in vain. -- John Adams
The scourge of life, and death's extreme disgrace, The smoke of hell,--that monster called Paine. -- Philip Sidney
How I longed to see these things; how I longed to see the Liberty Bell and walk on the streets where Thomas Jefferson, Tom Paine and Benjamin Franklin had walked. -- Burl Ives
[Josiah P. Mendum memorial at Paine Hall][He turned] the strait-laced Boston of sixty years ago [into] the enlightened Hub of today, . . . to 'destroy bigotry and uproot the evils of superstition. -- Josiah P. Mendum
[Dalton] Trumbo wrote this incredible pamphlet, almost on the level of Tom Paine's 'Common Sense,' called 'The Time of the Toad.' It's an exquisitely written treatise regarding the black list era. -- Jay Roach
It would seem that in Paine's view the code of government should be that of the legendary King Pausole, who prescribed but two laws for his subjects, the first being, Hurt no man , and the second, Then do as you please. -- Albert J. Nock
Also, an area that interests me - and it will probably take years to state what I mean - is the period of the rise of democracy, with Tom Paine, which is around the turn of the 18th century into the 19th. -- Fiona Shaw
The liberty of the press is not confined to newspapers and periodicals. It necessarily embraces pamphlets and leaflets. These indeed have been historic weapons in the defense of liberty, as the pamphlets of Thomas Paine and others in our history abundantly attest. -- Charles Evans Hughes
What I say should always be prefaced with this: I'm not really politically articulate. I just try to be like Thomas Paine: what is common sense? So when I say these things to you, I am speaking from a humanist point of view. I just look around and see what's wrong. -- Patti Smith
Paines to get, care to keep, feare to lose. -- George Herbert
Feed him ye must, whose food fills you. And that this pleasure is like raine, Not sent ye for to drowne your paine, But for to make it spring againe. -- Robert Herrick
This huge and terrible industry [the slave trade] was blessed by all churches and for a long time aroused absolutely no religious protest. . . . In the eighteenth century, a few dissenting Mennonites and Quakers in America began to call for abolition, as did some freethinkers like Thomas Paine. -- Christopher Hitchens
Tom Paine was a great American visionary. His book, Common Sense, sold a couple of hundred thousand copies in a population of four or five million. That means it was a best seller for years. People were thoughtful then. Hope is one thing. But you need to have hope with thought. -- Studs Terkel
I say this often, THINK. There is something in life called common sense. Webster's says common sense is sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts. Perhaps this is why in 1776, Thomas Paine used these words as a title for the most famous pamphlet ever written. -- Jack White
But you know, where did the Brontes go to college? Where did George Eliot go to college? Where did Thomas Paine or Thomas Jefferson or George Washington go? Did George Washington go to college? This idea which we now have that people ought to have these credentials is really ridiculous. Where did Homer go to college? -- Jamaica Kincaid
The crime of ingratitude has not yet stained, and I trust never will stain, our national character. You are considered by them as not only having rendered important service in our own revolution, but as being, on a more extended scale, the friend of human rights, and able advocate of public liberty. To the welfare of Thomas Paine, the Americas are not, nor can they be, indifferent. -- James Monroe
And painefull pleasure turnes to pleasing paine. -- Edmund Spenser
It's more paine to doe nothing then something. -- George Herbert
Louers be war and tak gude heid about Quhome that ye lufe, for quhome ye suffer paine. I lat yow wit, thair is richt few thairout Quhome ye may traist to haue trew lufe agane. -- Robert Henryson
Is not short paine well borne, that brings long ease,And layes the soul to sleepe in quiet grave?Sleepe after toyle, port after stormie seas,Ease after warre, death after life does greatly please. -- Edmund Spenser

Send