Thomas Paine — "These are the times that try men's souls."

"If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace."

"To argue with a man who has renounced the use of reason, is like administering medicine to the dead."

"It [hereditary succession] appears under all the various characters of childhood, decrepitude, dotage, a thing at nurse, in leading-strings, or in crutches. It reverses the wholesome order of nature. …"

"All religions are in their nature mild and benign, and it is only when they are made the instruments of political power that they become sanguinary and oppressive."

"Government, by being established on a false system, is a nursery of fraud and corruption, and needs to be reformed."