Thomas Paine Quotes
How necessary it is at all times to watch against the attempted encroachment of power, and to prevent its running to excess.
Paine, Thomas. Dissertations on Government, the Affairs of the Bank, and Paper-Money. Charles Cist, 1786, p. 14.
His concept of “misbehaving” is not corruption or waste and inefficiency. He is referring to legal opinions which Bork believes are at variance with his and other ultra conservatives view of what the law ought to be. They see the courts as inappropriately activist especially when their opinions are at variance with the traditional cultural norms and values of the society, except of course when it agrees with one of the conservative doctrines.
Commenting on the philosophy behind the concept of the Bank of the United States, a central bank:
This quotation is from Jefferson’s draft, but was not in the final.
This is the major factor in many nations trying to shift to a democracy from a totalitarian form of government. The winners assume that they can now do anything without regard for the minority rights of opinions.
Thomas Paine was an English-born American political activist, philosopher, political theorist, and revolutionary. He authored Common Sense (1776) and The American Crisis (1776–1783), the two most influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution, and helped inspire the patriots in 1776 to declare independence from Great Britain. His ideas reflected Enlightenment-era ideals of transnational human rights. Historian Saul K. Padover described him as "a corsetmaker by trade, a journalist by profession, and a propagandist by inclination".
