BY Table of Contents
Thomas Paine (1737-1809) was an English-born corset-maker who became the most influential pamphleteer of the American Revolution. His Common Sense sold 500,000 copies in a country of 2.5 million people - the equivalent of a 65-million-copy bestseller today. He followed it with The American Crisis, Rights of Man, and The Age of Reason, each one a direct assault on monarchy, state religion, and the idea that ordinary people need rulers to think for them.
Paine wrote for working people, not academics. His sentences are short, his arguments are clear, and his contempt for concentrated power is total. He died broke, abandoned by the political class he helped create - which tells you everything about what happens when you take liberty seriously enough to apply it to everyone. These quotes hold up because the threats Paine identified have not gone away.
Paine on Liberty, Rights, and Independence
“He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression.”
- Thomas Paine, Dissertation on First Principles of Government (1795)
“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.”
- Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. IV (1777)
“Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another; and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess.”
- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, Part the First (1791)
“I have always strenuously supported the right of every man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.”
- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, Part I, Introduction (1794)
“What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.”
- Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. I (1776)
“If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.”
- Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. I (1776)
“When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.”
- Thomas Paine, Reflections on Titles (1775)
“An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws.”
- Thomas Paine, Dissertation on First Principles of Government (1795)
“For all men being originally equals, no one by birth could have the right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others forever, and tho’ himself might deserve some decent degree of honours of his cotemporaries, yet his descendants might be far too unworthy to inherit them.”
- Thomas Paine, Common Sense, Of Monarchy and Hereditary Succession (1776)
“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, Rights of Man, Part the Second (1792)
Paine on Government, Tyranny, and Power
“Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.”
- Thomas Paine, Common Sense, On the Origin and Design of Government in General (1776)
“We still feel the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry, and grasping at the spoil of the multitude. Invention is continually exercised to furnish new pretenses for revenue and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none to escape without a tribute.”
- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, Part the Second, Chapter V (1792)
“Governments … pervert the abundance which civilized life produces… It affords to them pretenses for power and revenue, for which there would be neither occasion nor apology, if the circle of civilization were rendered complete.”
- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, Part the Second, Chapter V (1792)
“I become irritated at the attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all knaves and fools.”
- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, Part the Second (1792)
“Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”
- Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. I (1776)
“…taxes are not raised to carry on wars, but that wars are raised to carry on taxes.”
- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, Part the First (1791)
“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, Common Sense, Of the Present Ability of America (1776)
“Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise.”
- Thomas Paine, Common Sense, On the Origin and Design of Government in General (1776)
More Paine Quotes
“A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.”
- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, Part the First (1791)
“To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.”
- Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. V (1778)
“The real man smiles in trouble, gathers strength from distress, and grows brave by reflection.”
- Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. I (1776)
“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.”
- Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. I (1776)
“Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.”
- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, Part I (1794)
“The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason. I have never used any other, and I trust I never shall.”
- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, Part I, Introduction (1794)
“An army of principles can penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot.”
- Thomas Paine, Agrarian Justice (1797)
Final Thoughts
Paine is the rare political writer whose work actually did what political writing is supposed to do: change the world. Common Sense didn’t just argue for independence - it made independence feel inevitable. He took a scattered colonial grievance and turned it into a coherent case that ordinary farmers and tradesmen could understand, repeat, and act on. No other pamphlet in history has a better conversion rate.
What makes Paine dangerous - and worth reading today - is that he applied his principles consistently. He defended the American Revolution, then the French Revolution, then attacked organized religion, then criticized Washington himself. He didn’t pick a team. He picked a set of ideas and followed them wherever they led, which is why every faction eventually turned on him.
Start with Common Sense. It’s short, it’s free online, and it reads like it was written last week. If the arguments feel obvious, that’s because Paine won. The ideas he fought for became the default assumptions of the modern world - which makes it easy to forget how radical they were when he first put them on paper.