Fiona Shaw Quotes

I think Tom Paine is one of the greatest men that's ever lived.

I know not whether any man in the world has had more influence on its inhabitants or affairs for the last thirty years than Tom Paine.

I think Tom Paine is one of the greatest men that's ever lived. He lived in the 18th century; as you all know, he was an Englishman who was involved in the writing of American Declaration of Independence, the American Constitution, the French Constitution, wrote the great book called 'The Rights of Man' - commercial over.

Consider the Essay as a political pamphlet on the Revolution side, and the fact that it was the Whig gospel for a century, and you will see its working merit.

I mean, the Constitution of this country was written 200 years ago. The house I was living in in Madrid is 350 years old! America is still a project, and you guys are working on it and bringing new things to it every day. That is beautiful to watch.

I never tire of reading Tom Paine.

All honor to Jefferson—the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document an abstract truth applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there that to-day and in all coming days it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the harbingers of reappearing tyranny and oppression.

I consider Paine our greatest political thinker…. We never had a sounder intelligence in this Republic. He was the equal of Washington in making American liberty possible. Where Washington performed Paine devised and wrote. The deeds of one in the world were matched by the deeds of the other with his pen.

Self-proclaimed saviors and other outliers come and go throughout our political history. Occasionally, they're successful; most times, they're not. But the system has rebalanced toward the basic principles of tolerance, freedom and democracy that were set forth by the Founders.

Quite naturally, the men who led in stirring up the revolt against Great Britain and in keeping the fighting temper of the Revolutionists at the proper heat were the boldest and most radical thinkers - men like Samuel Adams, Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Jefferson.

The left no longer stands for common sense, as it did in the days of Tom Paine.

However, it was the great 18th century social philosophers John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau who brought the concept of a social contract between citizens and governments sharply into political thinking, paving the way for popular democracy and constitutional republicanism.

New Hampshire is one of the birthplaces of American freedom and independence - a place with a love and a passion for liberty.

How I longed to see these things; how I longed to see the Liberty Bell and walk on the streets where Thomas Jefferson, Tom Paine and Benjamin Franklin had walked.

If the Christians who were alive in the 1770s behaved and believed like the Christians of today, there wouldn't be an America as we know it.

There is only one cure for the evils which newly acquired freedom produces, and that cure is freedom.

I believe the Republicans have never thought that democracy was anything but a tribal myth.

I would say I'm a 19th-century liberal, possibly even an 18th-century one.

When the American spirit was in its youth, the language of America was different: Liberty, sir, was the primary object.

In January 1776, Thomas Paine issued 'Common Sense,' advocating independence from Great Britain.

I'm a Progressive. Much in the same way our founding fathers - who, oddly enough, wouldn't get elected today - were Progressives.

The progress of the American Revolution has been so rapid and such the alteration of manners, the blending of characters, and the new train of ideas that almost universally prevail, that the principles which animated to the noblest exertions have been nearly annihilated.

We've got in the habit of not really understanding how freedom was in the 19th century, the idea of government of the people in the 19th century. America commits itself to that in theory.

One of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the great struggle for Independence.

I don’t believe in democracy because I don’t believe that any group at any time can change the course and goals of their ancestors…