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The happiness of society is the end of government. — John Adams · 1776If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace. — Thomas Paine · 1776We have it in our power to begin the world over again. — Thomas Paine · 1776Monarchy and succession have laid... The world in blood and ashes. — Thomas Paine · 1776Wisdom is not the purchase of a day. — Thomas Paine · 1776Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia and Africa have long expelled her. Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind. — Thomas Paine · 1776All 8 quotes →
It is a general popular error to imagine the loudest complainers for the public, to be the most anxious for its welfare. — Edmund Burke · 1769We must soften into a credulity below the milkiness of infancy, to think all men virtuous. We must be tainted with a malignity truly diabolical, to believe all the world to be equally wicked and corrupt. — Edmund Burke · 1770To complain of the age we live in, to murmur at the present possessors of power, to lament the past, to conceive extravagant hopes of the future, are the common dispositions of the greatest part of mankind. — Edmund Burke · 1770I am not one of those who think that the people are never in the wrong. They have been so, frequently and outrageously, both in other countries and in this. But I do say, that in all disputes between them and their rulers, the presumption is at least upon a par in favour of the people. — Edmund Burke · 1770
None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. — John Milton · 1649No man who knows aught, can be so stupid to deny that all men naturally were born free. — John Milton · 1649