Thomas Paine

the former promotes our happiness possitively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.

Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; . . .

of which Class, regardless of Party Censure, is the AUTHOR.

The laying a Country desolate with Fire and Sword, declaring War against the natural rights of all Mankind, and extirpating the Defenders thereof from the Face of the Earth, is the Concern of every Man to whom Nature hath given the Power of feeling . . .

The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind. Many circumstances hath and will arise which are not local, but universal, and through which the principles of all Lovers of Mankind are affected, and in the Event of which their Affections are interested.

The wise and the worthy need not the triumph of a pamphlet; and those whose sentiments are injudicious or unfriendly will
cease of themselves unless too much pains are bestowed
upon their conversion.

In the following sheets, the author hath studiously avoided everything which is personal among ourselves. Compliments as well as censure to individuals make no part thereof.

they have an undoubted privilege to inquire into the pretensions of both, and equally to reject the usurpation of either.

and as the King
of England hath undertaken in his own Right to support the
Parliament in what he calls Theirs, and as the good people of
this country are grievously oppressed by the combination . . .

As a long and violent abuse of power is generally the Means of calling the right of it in question (and in Matters too which might never have been thought of, had not the Sufferers been aggravated into the inquiry) . . .

Dear sir, I bid you to stand down. I’ve not the time for another Crisis.

A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.

Introduction
Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor.