A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.
Thomas PaineRead
Human nature is not of itself vicious.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Human nature is inherently good, not evil.
Thomas Paine's quote suggests that humans are born with a fundamental goodness and are not inherently disposed to vice. Instead, it is societal influences and circumstances that lead individuals to act in harmful or immoral ways, implying a belief in the potential for human goodness and the importance of positive environments in cultivating this trait.
Themes
Human NatureGoodnessSocietyMoralityVice
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion on moral philosophy, one might reference this quote to argue that society shapes individual behavior.
More from Thomas Paine
All quotes βThat God cannot lie, is no advantage to your argument, because it is no proof that priests can not, or that the Bible does not.
Thomas PaineRead
I consider the war of America against Britain as the country's war, the public's war, or the war of the people in their own behalf, for the security of their natural rights, and the protection of their own property.
Thomas PaineRead
Had the news of salvation by Jesus Christ been inscribed on the face of the sun and the moon, in characters that all nations would have understood, the whole earth had known it in twenty-four hours, and all nations would have believed it; whereas, though it is now almost two thousand years since, as they tell us, Christ came upon earth, not a twentieth part of the people of the earth know anything of it, and among those who do, the wiser part do not believe it.
Thomas PaineRead
The end of all political associations is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man; and these rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance of oppression.
Thomas PaineRead
To reason with goverments, as they have existed for ages, is to argue with brutes. It is only from the nations themselves that reforms can be expected
Thomas PaineRead
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I understood . . . that those who desired salvation should act like the trustee who, though having control over great possessions, regards not an iota of them as his own.
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People must be free to work, to save, to own their own home, to take risks, to invest in each other and, in essence, to control their own lives.
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It is in vain to hope to guard against events too mighty for human foresight or precaution, and it would be idle to object to a government because it could not perform impossibilities.
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We spend our time envying people whom we wouldn't wish to be.
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The good four. Honest with ourselves and with whatever is friend to us; courageous toward the enemy; generous toward the vanquished; polite-always that is how the four cardinal virtues want us.
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The boy was lying, fast asleep, on a rude bed upon the floor; so pale with anxiety, and sadness, and the closeness of his prison, that he looked like death; not death as it shews in shroud and coffin, but in the guise it wears when life has just departed; when a young and gentle spirit has, but an instant, fled to Heaven: and the gross air of the world has not had time to breathe upon the changing dust it hallowed.
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