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.”

“But when the country, into which I had just set my foot, was set on fire about my ears, it was time to stir. It was time for every man to stir.”

“It is of the utmost danger to society to make it (religion) a party in political disputes.”

“Thomas did not believe the resurrection; and, as they say, would not believe without having ocular and manual demonstration himself. So neither will I; and the reason is equally as good for me, and for every other person, as for Thomas.”

“[T]he remedy of force can never supply the remedy of reason.”

“Government by kings was first introduced into the world by the Heathens, from whom the children of Israel copied the custom. It was the most prosperous invention the Devil ever set on foot for the promotion of idolatry.”

“But where, say 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 Great Britain… so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America the law is king.”

“The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries, that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion.”

“The plea is, in a great measure, false; they had no permission to catch and enslave people who never injured them.”

“Before anything can be reasoned upon to a conclusion, certain facts, principles, or data, to reason from, must be established, admitted, or denied.”

“If the slavery of the parents be unjust, much more is their children's; if the parents were justly slaves, yet the children are born free; this is the natural, perfect right of all mankind; they are nothing but a just recompense to those who bring them up: And as much less is commonly spent on them than others, they have a right, in justice, to be proportionably sooner free.”

“The doctrine of redemption is founded on a mere pecuniary idea corresponding to that of a debt which another person might pay; and as this pecuniary idea corresponds again with the system of second redemption, obtained through the means of money given to the Church for pardons, the probability is that the same persons fabricated both the one and the other of those theories; and that, in truth there is no such thing as redemption — that it is fabulous, and that man stands in the same relative condition with his Maker as he ever did stand since man existed, and that it is his greatest consolation to think so.”

“Who the Author of this Production is, is wholly unnecessary to the Public, as the Object for Attention is the DOCTRINE ITSELF, not the MAN. Yet it may not be unnecessary to say, That he is unconnected with any Party, and under no sort of Influence public or private, but the influence of reason and principle.”

“Such arguments ill become us, since the time of reformation came, under Gospel light. All distinctions of nations, and privileges of one above others, are ceased; Christians are taught to account all men their neighbours; and love their neighbours as themselves; and do to all men as they would be done by; to do good to all men; and Man-stealing is ranked with enormous crimes. Is the barbarous enslaving our inoffensive neighbours, and treating them like wild beasts subdued by force, reconcilable with all these Divine precepts? Is this doing to them as we would desire they should do to us? If they could carry off and enslave some thousands of us, would we think it just?—One would almost wish they could for once; it might convince more than Reason, or the Bible.”

“When the tongue or the pen is let loose in a phrenzy of passion, it is the man, and not the subject, that becomes exhausted.”

“It is the duty of every man, so far as his ability extends, to detect and expose delusion and error.”

“[A]ristocracy has a tendency to degenerate the human species.”

“So monstrous is the making and keeping them slaves at all, abstracted from the barbarous usage they suffer, and the many evils attending the practice; as selling husbands away from wives, children from parents, and from each other, in violation of sacred and natural ties; and opening the way for adulteries, incests, and many shocking consequences, for all of which the guilty Masters must answer to the final Judge.”

“I have lived an honest and useful life to mankind; my time has been spend in doing good and I die in perfect composure and resignation to the will of my Creator, God.”

“They show as little Reason as Conscience who put the matter by with saying—"Men, in some cases, are lawfully made Slaves, and why may not these?" So men, in some cases, are lawfully put to death, deprived of their goods, without their consent; may any man, therefore, be treated so, without any conviction of desert? Nor is this plea mended by adding—"They are set forth to us as slaves, and we buy them without farther inquiry, let the sellers see to it." Such men may as well join with a known band of robbers, buy their ill-got goods, and help on the trade; ignorance is no more pleadable in one case than the other; the sellers plainly own how they obtain them. But none can lawfully buy without evidence that they are not concurring with Men-Stealers; and as the true owner has a right to reclaim his goods that were stolen, and sold; so the slave, who is proper owner of his freedom, has a right to reclaim it, however often sold.”

“Imagination has given figure and character to centaurs, satyrs, and down to all the fairy tribe; but titles baffle even the powers of fancy, and are a chimerical non-descript.”

“It is a want of feeling to talk of priests and bells while so many infants are perishing in the hospitals, and aged and infirm poor in the streets, from the want of necessaries.”

“The moral duty of man consists in imitating the moral goodness and beneficence of God manifested in the creation towards all his creatures. That seeing as we daily do the goodness of God to all men, it is an example calling upon all men to practise the same towards each other; and, consequently, that every thing of persecution and revenge between man and man, and every thing of cruelty to animals, is a violation of moral duty.”

“And the final event to himself has been, that, as he rose like a rocket, he fell like the stick.”

“People in general do not know what wickedness there is in this pretended word of God. Brought up in habits of superstition, they take it for granted that the Bible is true, and that it is good; they permit themselves not to doubt of it, and they carry the ideas they form of the benevolence of the Almighty to the book which they have been taught to believe was written by his authority. Good heavens! it is quite another thing; it is a book of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy; for what can be greater blasphemy than to ascribe the wickedness of man to the orders of the Almighty?”

“He that rebels against reason is a real rebel, but he that in defence of reason, rebels against tyranny, has a better title to "defender of the faith" than George the Third.”

“It appears to general observation, that revolutions create genius and talents; but those events do no more than bring them forward. There is existing in man, a mass of sense lying in a dormant state, and which, unless something excites it to action, will descend with him, in that condition, to the grave. As it is to the advantage of society that the whole of its faculties should be employed, the construction of government ought to be such as to bring forward, by a quiet and regular operation, all that extent of capacity which never fails to appear in revolutions.”

“It is the nature and intention of a constitution to prevent governing by party, by establishing a common principle that shall limit and control the power and impulse of party, and that says to all parties, thus far shalt thou go and no further. But in the absence of a constitution, men look entirely to party; and instead of principle governing party, party governs principle.”

“The Grecians and Romans were strongly possessed of the spirit of liberty but not the principle, for at the time that they were determined not to be slaves themselves, they employed their power to enslave the rest of mankind.”

“But there is another and greater distinction for which no truly natural or religious reason can be assigned, and that is, the distinction of men into KINGS and SUBJECTS. Male and female are the distinctions of nature, good and bad the distinctions of heaven; but how a race of men came into the world so exalted above the rest, and distinguished like some new species, is worth enquiring into, and whether they are the means of happiness or of misery to mankind.”