THOMAS PAINE:
SOME LEADING IDEAS

"There never did, there never will, and there never can exist a parliament, or any description of men, or any generation of men, in any country, possessed of the right or the power of binding and controlling posterity to the `end of time'." (Rights of Man, p. 42 Penguin)

"It is the living and not the dead that are to be accommodated." (p. 42)

"Immortal power is not a human right, and therefore cannot be a right of parliament." (p. 44)

"The fact is, that portions of antiquity, by proving everything, establish nothing. It is authority against authority, all the way, till we come to the divine origin of the rights of man at the creation." (p. 65-66)

"... all the religions known in the world are founded, so far as they relate to man, on the unity of man, as being all of one degree. Whether in heaven or in hell, or in whatever state man may be supposed to exist hereafter, the good and the bad are the only distinctions." (p. 67)

"Natural rights are those which appertain to man in right of his existence. Of this kind are all the intellectual rights, or rights of the mind, and also all those rights of acting as an individual for his own comfort and happiness, which are not injurious to the natural rights of others." (p. 68)

".... individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist." (p. 70)

"Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the strongly marked feature of all law-religions, or religions established by law."

"Speech is, in the first place, one of the natural rights of man always retained; and with respect to the National Assembly, the use of it is their duty, and the nation is their authority." (p. 90)

"The rights of men in society, are neither divisible, nor transferable, nor annihilable, but are descendable only; and it is not in the power of any generation to intercept finally, and cut off the descent." (p. 124)

"Government in a well-constituted republic, requires no belief from man beyoned what his reason can give. He sees the rationale of the whole system, its origin and its operation; and as it is best supported when best understood, the human faculties act with boldness, and acquire, under this form of government, a gigantic manliness." (p. 140)