Quote#Freedom
It is from a strange mixture of tyranny and cowardice that exclusions…
Quote byThomas Paine · 1737–1809
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Letter to the Addressers (1792).
English (original)
It is from a strange mixture of tyranny and cowardice that exclusions have been set up and continued. The boldness to do wrong at first, changes afterwards into cowardly craft, and at last into fear.
— Thomas Paine
More from Thomas Paine
He who dares not offend cannot be honest.
Where knowledge is a duty, ignorance is a crime.
Eloquence may strike the ear, but the language of poverty strikes the heart; the first may charm like music, but the second alarms like a knell.
This sacrifice of common sense is the certain badge which distinguishes slavery from freedom; for when men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.
A man who is so exceedingly civil that for the sake of quietude and a peaceable name will silently see the community imposed upon, or their rights invaded, may, in his principles, be a good man, but cannot be stiled a useful one, neither …
War involves in its progress such a train of unforeseen and unsupposed circumstances ... that no human wisdom can calculate the end.