The American constitutions were to liberty, what a grammar is to language: they define its parts of speech and practically construct them into syntax.
-Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man
Author Archives: Thomas Schueneman
On Why Being Mean is Stupid
There is something in meanness which excites a species of resentment that never subsides, and something in cruelty which stirs up the heart to the highest agony of human hatred…
-Thomas Paine, The Crisis
On War – Good God Ya’ All
When we take a survey of mankind we cannot help cursing the wretch, who, to the unavoidable misfortunes of nature shall wilfully add the clamities of war. One would think there were evils enough in the world without studying to increase them, and that life is sufficiently short without shaking the sand that measures it.
-Thomas Paine, The Crises
On the Findings of the Iraq Commision
If there is a sin superior to every other it is that of willful and offensive war
-Thomas Paine, The Crisis
On Giving Yourself a Break
Reason and Ignorance, the opposite of each other, influence the great bulk of mankind
-Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
On Living in an Age of Revolution
It is an age of Revolutions, in which everything may be looked for
-Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man
On Faith, Free Will, and the Tyranny of the Soul
“Of all the tyrannies that afflict mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst. Every other species of tyranny is limited to the world we live in, but this attempts a stride beyond the grave and seeks to pursue us into eternity.” The right to believe as one sees fit, to observe any faith tradition, or …
Continue reading “On Faith, Free Will, and the Tyranny of the Soul”
On The Right (and obligation) to Your Own Opinion
“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 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
On Fools, Thinking for Ourselves, the Limits of Power, and the Preservation of Liberty
When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.
-Thomas Paine
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