Frases de Thomas Paine

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“O governo, mesmo quando perfeito, não passa de um mal necessário; quando imperfeito, é um mal insuportável.”

“O facto de continuarmos a pensar que uma determinada coisa não é errada dá-nos uma aparência superficial de estarmos certos.”

“O mundo é o meu país, toda a humanidade são meus irmãos, e fazer o bem é a minha religião.”

“Manter o caráter é bem mais fácil do que recuperá-lo.”

“Quem quer garantir a própria liberdade, deve preservar da opressão até o inimigo; pois, se fugir a esse dever, estará a estabelecer um precedente que até a ele próprio há-de atingir.”

“A crença num Deus cruel faz o homem cruel.”

“Embora a avareza impeça um homem de se tornar necessariamente pobre, geralmente torna-o demasiado timorato para enriquecer.”

“Para ser feliz um homem tem que ser fiel a si mesmo. A infidelidade não consiste em acreditar ou em não acreditar, consiste em professar aquilo em que não se acredita”

“A minha pátria é o mundo, e a minha religião a prática do bem.”

“Não fazer nada é o trabalho mais cansativo do mundo, pois você não pode se demitir e descansar!”

“Eu admiro aqueles que conseguem sorrir com os problemas, reunir forças na angústia, e ganhar coragem na reflexão. É coisa de pequenas mentes encolher-se, mas aquele cujo coração é firme, e cuja consciência aprova sua conduta, perseguirá seus princípios até a morte.”

“A sociedade, em qualquer forma, é uma benção, mas o governo, mesmo em sua melhor forma, não é nada mais que um mal necessário; na sua pior forma, é intolerável.”

“O melhor governo é o que governa menos.”

“É muito mais fácil conservar o caráter do que recobrá-lo.”

“O princípio moral das revoluções é instruir, não destruir.”

“Existem tempos em que as almas são testadas.”

“Sempre que lemos as histórias obscenas, os deboches voluptuosos, as execuções cruéis e torturantes, e o espírito implacável de vingança com os quais mais de metade da Bíblia está preenchida, seria mais consistente que a chamássemos de a palavra de um demônio, do que de a Palavra de Deus. Trata-se de uma história de maldade, que serviu para corromper e brutalizar a humanidade; e, de minha parte, eu sinceramente a detesto, assim como detesto tudo que é cruel.”

“A Bíblia é o livro mais lido e o menos examinado que qualquer outro que já existiu.”

“Aquele que não ousa ofender, não pode ser honesto.”

“As leis de difícil execução em geral não podem ser boas.”

“A sociedade é produto de nossos desejos, e o governo de nossas maldades”

“Os títulos não passam de apelidos, e todos apelidos são títulos.”

“Alguns escritores de tal modo confundiram sociedade e governo, que entre os dois deixaram pouca ou nenhuma distinção; entretanto, não só são diferentes como possuem origens diversas. A sociedade é produzida pelas nossas necessidades, e o governo, pela nossa maldade; a primeira promove 'positivamente' a nossa felicidade, unindo as nossas afeições, enquanto o segundo o faz 'negativamente', refreando os nossos vícios. A primeira encoraja o intercâmbio, o segundo cria distinções. A primeira é uma patrocinadora, o segundo, punitivo.”

“Minha mente é a minha igreja.”

“É impossível calcular o dano moral, se é que posso chamá-lo assim, que a mentira mental tem causado na sociedade.”

“Estimamos pouco aquilo que obtemos com demasiada facilidade.”

“Ao planearmos para a posteridade, deveríamos lembrar-nos de que a virtude não é hereditária.”

“Um governo que precisa de juramentos não merece apoio, nem deve ser apoiado.”

“Um bom professor vale mais que cem sacerdotes.”

“É a direcção e não a intensidade que deve ser levada em consideração.”

“O erro que começou há mil anos é tão errado como o que começa hoje, e o acerto que surge hoje é tão certo como se tivesse a sanção de séculos.”

“Fazer o bem é a minha religião.”

“Muitas vezes, o sublime e o ridículo encontram-se tão estreitamente relacionados, que é difícil classificá-los separadamente. Um passo além do sublime e cai-se no ridículo; um passo além do ridículo e chega-se ao sublime.”

“O governo é somente necessário para suprir os poucos casos em que a sociedade e a civilização não são convenientemente competentes.”

“It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.”

“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.”

“All the tales of miracles, with which the Old and New Testament are filled, are fit only for impostors to preach and fools to believe.”

“That there are men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the quarrels of Nations is as shocking as it is true…”

“Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.”

“I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.”

“When men yield up the exclusive privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.”

“An army of principles will penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot”

“Man did not enter society to be worse off, or to have fewer rights, but rather to have those rights better secured”

“Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property… Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them.”

“To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.”

“Nothing, they say is more certain than death, and nothing more uncertain than the time of dying”

“The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind.”

“When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.”

“The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum.”

“But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing.”

“Where knowledge is a duty, ignorance is a crime.”

“As these people are not convicted of forfeiting freedom, they have still a natural, perfect right to it; and the Governments whenever they come should, in justice set them free, and punish those who hold them in slavery.”

“It is to be observed throughout Mr. Burke's book that he never speaks of plots against the Revolution; and it is from those plots that all the mischiefs have arisen. It suits his purpose to exhibit the consequences without their causes. It is one of the arts of the drama to do so. If the crimes of men were exhibited with their sufferings, stage effect would sometimes be lost, and the audience would be inclined to approve where it was intended they should commiserate.”

“The society adopts neither rites nor priesthood, and it will never lose sight of the resolution not to advance any thing as a society inconvenient to any sect or sects, in any time or country, and under any government.
It will be seen that it is so much the more easy for the society to keep within this circle, because, that the dogmas of the Theophilanthropists are those upon which all the sects have agreed, that their moral is. that upon which there has never been the least dissent; and that the name they have taken expresses the double end of all the sects, that of leading to the adoration of God and love of man.”

“How just, how suitable to our crime is the punishment with which Providence threatens us? We have enslaved multitudes, and shed much innocent blood in doing it; and now are threatened with the same. And while other evils are confessed, and bewailed, why not this especially, and publicly; than which no other vice, if all others, has brought so much guilt on the land?”

“The great Question may be—What should be done with those who are enslaved already? To turn the old and infirm free, would be injustice and cruelty; they who enjoyed the labours of their better days should keep, and treat them humanely. As to the rest, let prudent men, with the assistance of legislatures, determine what is practicable for masters, and best for them. Perhaps some could give them lands upon reasonable rent, some, employing them in their labour still, might give them some reasonable allowances for it; so as all may have some property, and fruits of their labours at their own disposal, and be encouraged to industry; the family may live together, and enjoy the natural satisfaction of exercising relative affections and duties, with civil protection, and other advantages, like fellow men. Perhaps they might sometime form useful barrier settlements on the frontiers. Thus they may become interested in the public welfare, and assist in promoting it; instead of being dangerous, as now they are, should any enemy promise them a better condition.”

“Voltaire, who was both the flatterer and the satirist of despotism, took another line. His force lay in exposing and ridiculing the superstitions which priest-craft, united with state-craft, had interwoven with governments. It was not from the purity of his principles, or his love of mankind (for satire and philanthropy are not naturally concordant), but from his strong capacity of seeing folly in its true shape, and his irresistible propensity to expose it, that he made those attacks. They were, however, as formidable as if the motive had been virtuous; and he merits the thanks rather than the esteem of mankind.”

“Hereditary succession has no claim. 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 for ever, and tho' himself might deserve some decent degree of honours of his contemporaries, yet his descendants might be far too unworthy to inherit them.”

“It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.”

“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.”

“Most shocking of all is alledging the Sacred Scriptures to favour this wicked practice. One would have thought none but infidel cavillers would endeavour to make them appear contrary to the plain dictates of natural light, and Conscience, in a matter of common Justice and Humanity; which they cannot be. Such worthy men, as referred to before, judged otherways; Mr. BAXTER declared, the Slave-Traders should be called Devils, rather than Christians; and that it is a heinous crime to buy them. But some say, "the practice was permitted to the Jews."”

“How came the king by a power which the people are afraid to trust, and always obliged to check? Such a power could not be the gift of a wise people, neither can any power, which needs checking, be from God; yet the provision, which the constitution makes, supposes such a power to exist. But the provision is unequal to the task; the means either cannot or will not accomplish the end, and the whole affair is a felo de se; for as the greater weight will always carry up the less, and as all the wheels of a machine are put in motion by one, it only remains to know which power in the constitution has the most weight, for that will govern; and though the others, or a part of them, may clog, or, as the phrase is, check the rapidity of its motion, yet so long as they cannot stop it, their endeavors will be ineffectual; the first moving power will at last have its way, and what it wants in speed is supplied by time.”

“All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.”