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Thomas Paine citations
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Thomas Paine, né le 29 janvier 1737 à Thetford en Grande-Bretagne et mort le 8 juin 1809 à New York aux États-Unis, est un intellectuel, pamphlétaire, révolutionnaire britannique, américain et français. Il est connu pour son engagement durant la révolution américaine en faveur de l'indépendance des treize colonies britanniques en Amérique du Nord. Il a exposé ses positions dans un célèbre pamphlet intitulé Le Sens commun, publié quelques mois avant la signature de la Déclaration d’indépendance américaine en 1776.

Ses écrits, parmi lesquels figure Rights of Man , ont également exercé une grande influence sur les acteurs de la Révolution française : il est élu député à l’assemblée nationale en 1792. Considéré par les Montagnards comme un allié des Girondins, il est progressivement mis à l’écart, notamment par Robespierre, puis emprisonné en décembre 1793.

Après la Terreur, il est relâché et connaît un certain succès grâce à son livre Le Siècle de la raison qui analyse le christianisme et milite en faveur du déisme. Dans Agrarian Justice , il analyse les origines du droit de propriété et introduit le concept de revenu de base ou universel, proche du revenu minimum.

Thomas Paine resta en France jusqu’en 1802, période pendant laquelle il critique l’ascension de Napoléon Bonaparte, qualifiant le Premier consul de « charlatan le plus parfait qui eût jamais existé ». Sur l’invitation du président Thomas Jefferson, il revient aux États-Unis où il meurt en 1809 à 72 ans. Wikipedia  

✵ 9. février 1737 – 8. juin 1809  •  Autres noms Пейн Томас
Thomas Paine photo
Thomas Paine: 264 citations1 J'aime

Thomas Paine Citations

“J'ai toujours vigoureusement défendu le droit de chaque homme à sa propre opinion, aussi différente qu'elle puisse être de la mienne. Celui qui refuse à un autre ce droit se rend lui-même esclave de son opinion présente, car il se prive du droit d'en changer… L'infidélité ne consiste pas à croire ou à ne pas croire, mais à affirmer croire ce que l'on ne croit pas. Il est impossible d'évaluer les dégâts moraux que le mensonge à soi-même provoque dans une société.”

Thomas Paine

), 1793

“De toutes les tyrannies qui frappent l’humanité, la pire est la tyrannie en matière de religion.”

Thomas Paine

), 1793

Thomas Paine: Citations en anglais

“The christian religion is a parody on the worship of the Sun, in which they put a man whom they call Christ, in the place of the Sun, and pay him the same adoration which was originally paid to the Sun.”

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Thomas Paine

An Essay on the Origin of Free-Masonry (1803-1805); found in manuscript form after Paine's death and thought to have been written for an intended part III of The Age of Reason. It was partially published in 1810 and published in its entirety in 1818.
1800s

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

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Thomas Paine

The complete political works. Rights of man: being an answer to Mr. Burke's attack on the French Revolution, p. 306
1790s

“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.”

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Thomas Paine

1790s, First Principles of Government (1795)
Contexte: 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.

“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.”

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Thomas Paine

Source: The Writing of Thomas Paine

“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…”

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Thomas Paine

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

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Thomas Paine livre The Age of Reason

Source: The Age of Reason

“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.”

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Thomas Paine livre The Age of Reason

Source: 1790s, The Age of Reason, Part I (1794)

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

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Thomas Paine

1770s, Common Sense (1776)

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

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Thomas Paine

1790s, Agrarian Justice (1797)
Source: Common Sense, The Rights of Man and Other Essential Writings
Contexte: 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.

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

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Thomas Paine

“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.”

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Thomas Paine

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

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Thomas Paine

1770s, Common Sense (1776)
Contexte: The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind. Many circumstances hath, and will arise, which are not local, but universal, and through which the principles of all Lovers of Mankind are affected, and in the Event of which, their Affections are interested. The laying a Country desolate with Fire and Sword, declaring War against the natural rights of all Mankind, and extirpating the Defenders thereof from the Face of the Earth, is the Concern of every Man to whom Nature hath given the Power of feeling; of which Class, regardless of Party Censure, is the AUTHOR.

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

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Thomas Paine

1770s, Common Sense (1776)

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

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Thomas Paine

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

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Thomas Paine livre Rights of Man

Source: Rights of Man

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

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Thomas Paine

&quot;Public Good&quot; (December 1780) http://www.thomas-paine-friends.org/paine-thomas_public-good-1780.html. <br class="br">1780s

“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.”

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Thomas Paine

1770s, African Slavery in America (March 1775)

“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.”

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Thomas Paine livre Rights of Man

Part 1.3 Rights of Man
1790s, Rights of Man, Part I (1791)

“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.”

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Thomas Paine

1790s, Discourse to the Theophilanthropists (1798)

“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?”

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Thomas Paine

1770s, African Slavery in America (March 1775)

“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.”

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Thomas Paine

1770s, African Slavery in America (March 1775)

“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.”

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Thomas Paine livre Rights of Man

Part 1.3 Rights of Man
1790s, Rights of Man, Part I (1791)

“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.”

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Thomas Paine

1770s, Common Sense (1776)

“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.”

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Thomas Paine livre The Age of Reason

1790s, The Age of Reason, Part I (1794)

“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.”

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Thomas Paine

1790s, Agrarian Justice (1797)

“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."”

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Thomas Paine

To which may be replied,
1770s, African Slavery in America (March 1775)

“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.”

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Thomas Paine

1770s, Common Sense (1776)

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