He who dares not offend cannot be honest.
— Thomas Paine"The Forester's Letters", Letter III: To Cato, Pennsylvania Journal (24 April 1776)
Use itGS4: honesty sometimes requires offending; candour over comfort.
Quotes / Thinkers / Thomas Paine
Thinker · 14 quotes
Thomas Paine quotes for UPSC
14 sourced quotes by Thomas Paine on democracy & freedom, integrity & honesty, economy, development & poverty, duty & responsibility, justice & rule of law, with a use case for each in GS4, Essay and interviews.
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A thing, moderately good, is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper, is always a virtue; but moderation in principle, is a species of vice.
— Thomas PaineLetter to the Addressers (1792)
Use itGS4: moderation in temper is virtue; moderation in principle is vice.
It is the duty of every man, so far as his ability extends, to detect and expose delusion and error.
— Thomas PaineThe Theophilanthropist: Containing Critical, Moral, Theological and Literary Essays, in Monthly Numbers, p. 387
Use itEssay on misinformation: each must expose delusion and error.
An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
— Thomas PaineFirst Principles of Government (1795)
Use itGS2 on misuse of laws: eagerness to punish erodes liberty; protect even enemies.
This sacrifice of common sense is the certain badge which distinguishes slavery from freedom; for when men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.
— Thomas Paine"Reflections on Titles", Pennsylvania Magazine (May, 1775)
Use itEssay on freedom of thought: surrendering thinking ends liberty.
An army of principles will penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot; it will succeed where diplomatic management would fall: it is neither the Rhine, the Channel, nor the ocean that can arrest its progress: it will march on the horizon of the world, and it will conquer.
— Thomas PaineMeans by Which the Fund Is to Be Created
Use itEssay on soft power: an army of principles conquers where soldiers cannot.
The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery, for slavery consists in being subject to the will of another, and he that has not a vote in the election of representatives is in this case.
— Thomas PaineFirst Principles of Government (1795)
Use itGS2 on universal adult franchise: vote is the right protecting all rights.
I care not how affluent some may be, provided that none be miserable in consequence of it. But it is impossible to enjoy affluence with the felicity it is capable of being enjoyed, while so much misery is mingled in the scene.
— Thomas PaineMeans by Which the Fund Is to Be Created
Use itEssay on inequality: affluence acceptable only if none are miserable from it.
Where knowledge is a duty, ignorance is a crime.
— Thomas PainePublic Good (Philadelphia: John Dunlap, 1780)
Use itGS4 on professional duty: where knowledge is required, ignorance is culpable.
Eloquence may strike the ear, but the language of poverty strikes the heart; the first may charm like music, but the second alarms like a knell.
— Thomas PaineThe Case of the Officers of Excise (1772), p. 20
Use itEssay on poverty: poverty's voice moves the heart more than eloquence.
Men did not make the earth... It is the value of the improvements only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property... Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds.
— Thomas PaineAgrarian Justice
Use itGS3 on land as commons: owners owe community rent; land value tax.
War involves in its progress such a train of unforeseen and unsupposed circumstances ... that no human wisdom can calculate the end.
— Thomas PaineProspects on the Rubicon (London: J. Debrett, 1787)
Use itEssay on war: no wisdom can calculate where a war will end.
It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.
— Thomas PaineLetter to the Addressers (1792)
Use itEssay on inquiry: only error fears scrutiny; truth welcomes it.
We live to improve, or we live in vain
— Thomas PaineAddress and Declaration at a Select Meeting of the Friends of Universal Peace and Liberty (August 20, 1791) p. 5
Use itLife: continuous self-improvement as purpose of life.