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Common Sense quotes
13 quotes from Common Sense by Thomas Paine. Source: Project Gutenberg e-text #147 (public domain in the USA), the text this site’s reader shows. Each quote is copied exactly from that text and links to its passage in the reader; when this page was built, every quote was checked word for word against the reader’s text.
Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.
The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind.
Of more worth is one honest man to society and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.
Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.
Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise.
One of the strongest natural proofs of the folly of hereditary right in kings, is, that nature disapproves it, otherwise she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule by giving mankind an ass for a lion.
But where says some is the King of America? I'll tell you Friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Britain.
Small islands not capable of protecting themselves, are the proper objects for kingdoms to take under their care; but there is something very absurd, in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island.
Common sense will tell us, that the power which hath endeavoured to subdue us, is of all others, the most improper to defend us.
It is not in the power of Britain or of Europe to conquer America, if she do not conquer herself by delay and timidity.
It is not in numbers, but in unity, that our great strength lies; yet our present numbers are sufficient to repel the force of all the world.
When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember, that virtue is not hereditary.
Immediate necessity makes many things convenient, which if continued would grow into oppressions. Expedience and right are different things.