There never yet was any truth or any principle so irresistibly obvious that all men believed it at once. Time and reason must cooperate with each other to the final establishment of any principle; and therefore those who may happen to be first convinced have not a right to persecute others, on whom conviction operates more slowly. The moral principle of revolutions is to instruct, not to destroy.
-Thomas Paine
Category Archives: Current Events
On Saving the Elephant
“The most effectual method to keep men honest is to enable them to live so. The tenderness of conscience is too often overmatched by the sharpness of want; and principle, like chastity, yields with just reluctance enough to excuse itself.” Immediately after a 1989 international trade ban on ivory, illegal elephant poaching was nearly stopped …
On the Problem of Assuming the Worst – Accepting a Heart of Darkness
For as certainly as a man predicts ill, he becomes inclined to wish it. The pride of having his judgment right hardens his heart, till at last he beholds with satisfaction, or sees with disappointment, the accomplishment or the failure of his predictions.
-Thomas Paine
On the War in Iraq, Nearly Four Years On
No human foresight can discern, no conclusion can be formed, what turn a war might take, if once set on foot by an invasion.
On the Need for Government Oversight and Citizen Involvement
Can we possibly suppose that if Governments had originated in a right principal, and had not an interest in pursuing a wrong one, the world could have been in the wretched and quarelsome condition we have seen it?
-Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
On Right Thinking, Logical Reasoning, and Not Judging a Book by its Cover
It is only by tracing things to their origin, that we can gina rightful ideas of them, and it is by gaining such ideas that we discover the boudary that divides right from wrong, and teaches every man to know his own.
-Thomas Paine, Agrarian Justice
On the State of the Union Address and Governement Assembled
That government is best which governs least.
-Thomas Paine
On Legislation Introduced to Address Global Warming and Climate Change
To perserve the benefits of what is called civilized life, and to remedy at the same time the evils it has produced, ought to be considered as one of the first objectives of reformed legislation,
-Thomas Paine, Agrarian Justice
On the Execution of a Tyrant
Civil Government does not consist in executions; but in making that provision for the instruction of youth and the support of age, as to exclude , as much as possible, profligacy from the one and despair from the other.
-Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
On Greeting a New Year
We have it within our power to begin the world over again.
-Thomas Paine