“I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.” – Thomas Paine

“Hitherto we have spoken only (and that but in part) of the natural rights of man. We have now to consider the civil rights of man, and to show how the one originates from the other. Man did not enter into society to become worse than he was before, nor to have fewer rights than he had before, but to have those rights better secured. His natural rights are the foundation of all his civil rights.” – Thomas Paine

“Natural rights are those which appertain to man in right of his existence. Of this kind are all the intellectual rights, or rights of the mind, and also all those rights of acting as an individual for his own comfort and happiness, which are not injurious to the natural rights of others.” – Thomas Paine

“…the natural rights of man… justified resistance to oppression.” – Thomas Paine

“POLITICAL LIBERTY CONSISTS IN THE POWER OF DOING WHATEVER DOES NOT INJURE ANOTHER. THE EXERCISE OF THE NATURAL RIGHTS OF EVERY MAN, HAS NO OTHER LIMITS THAN THOSE WHICH ARE NECESSARY TO SECURE TO EVERY OTHER MAN THE FREE EXERCISE OF THE SAME RIGHTS…” – Thomas Paine

"In casting our eyes over the world, it is extremely easy to distinguish the governments which have arisen out of society, or out of the social compact, from those which have not; but to place this in a clearer light than what a single glance may afford, it will be proper to take a review of the several sources from which governments have arisen and on which they have been founded.
They may be all comprehended under three heads.
First, Superstition.
Secondly, Power.
Thirdly, The common interest of society and the common rights of man.
The first was a government of priestcraft, the second of conquerors, and the third of reason." – Thomas Paine

“THE only idea man can affix to the name of God, is that of a first cause, the cause of all things. And, incomprehensibly difficult as it is for a man to conceive what a first cause is, he arrives at the belief of it, from the tenfold greater difficulty of disbelieving it. It is difficult beyond description to conceive that space can have no end; but it is more difficult to conceive an end. It is difficult beyond the power of man to conceive an eternal duration of what we call time; but it is more impossible to conceive a time when there shall be no time.
In like manner of reasoning, everything we behold carries in itself the internal evidence that it did not make itself. Every man is an evidence to himself, that he did not make himself; neither could his father make himself, nor his grandfather, nor any of his race; neither could any tree, plant, or animal make itself; and it is the conviction arising from this evidence, that carries us on, as it were, by necessity, to the belief of a first cause eternally existing, of a nature totally different to any material existence we know of, and by the power of which all things exist; and this first cause, man calls God.
It is only by the exercise of reason, that man can discover God. Take away that reason, and he would be incapable of understanding anything… How then is it that those people pretend to reject reason?” – Thomas Paine