Skip to content

To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.

— Thomas Paine

Another quote →

Topics

Mind

More quotes by Thomas Paine

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

The universe is composed of matter, and, as a system, is sustained by motion.

Discourse to the Theophilanthropists (1798)

To God, and not to man, are all men to account for their belief.

Discourse to the Theophilanthropists (1798)

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.

Accustom a people to believe that priests or any other class of men can forgive sins, and you will have sins in abundance.

Worship and Church Bells (1797)

All Thomas Paine quotes →

You may also like

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

H. P. Lovecraft The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.

Kenneth Boulding to Kenneth Boulding in: United States. Congress. House (1973)

The greater part of humanity is too much harassed and fatigued by the struggle with want, to rally itself for a new and sterner struggle with error.

Friedrich Schiller On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794)

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

George Bernard Shaw Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Thomas Paine (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.