Thomas Paine Day: Freethinkers’ Day

January 29 is Thomas Paine Day, or Freethinkers’ Day. It is celebrated to honors Thomas Paine’s role in propagating freethinking… using logic and reasoning, rather than going blindly by arbitrary authority. Paine was a great philosopher, inventor and politician. Born in Norfolk, England, Thomas Paine migrated to the British American colonies in 1774. He participated in the American Revolutionary War and has the title of The Father of the American Revolution. Paine greatly influenced the French Revolution as well.

Thomas Paine believed that the state should be separate from the church and encouraged the separation of religion and politics. He also fought for human rights and faced a great deal of opposition for advocating equal rights for women and people of all colors and religions.

Thomas Paine Quotes

• A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.

• A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.
• An army of principles can penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot.

• Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be true.

• He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from opposition; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself.

• He who is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death.
• I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.

• It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself.

• If we do not hang together, we shall surely hang separately.

• One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests.

• My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.

• Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.