Thomas Paine Quotes
Immediate necessity makes many things convenient, which if continued would grow into oppressions.
Paine, Thomas. Common Sense. R. Bell, 1776, p. 51.
Elected at 24 as the youngest British Prime Minister. This is perhaps the most elegant statement on the problem in English history, but it was not the first. Oliver Cromwell had preceded him. See Oliver Cromwell’s succinct version earlier: {585597}.
He was arguing that the government should be able to prohibit public demonstrations on the grounds that the protesters are “irresponsible power.” This position has been taken sometimes by the American right, and is common in all totalitarian states.
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".
