A Quote by Thomas Paine

Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence.

Thomas Paine

Quote Topics

Badge Dress Government Innocence Like Lost

Quote Author

Thomas Paine
English - Activist
January 29, 1737 - June 8, 1809

Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise.

Thomas Paine

For I see that then I was still all in a state of innocence, but that innocence, once lost, is lost forever.

Susan Hill

I can sing very comfortably from my vantage point because a lot of the music was about a loss of innocence, there's innocence contained in you but there's also innocence in the process of being lost.

Bruce Springsteen

Nuclear scientists lost their innocence when we used the atom bomb for the very first time. So we could argue computer scientists lost their innocence in 2009 when we started using malware as an offensive attack weapon.

Mikko Hypponen

Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.

Graham Greene

I suppose I could say that to be interested in innocence already suggests a remove from innocence, perhaps a longing for something that is lost.

Quentin S. Crisp

I don't think that on a daily basis, people need to be so concerned with others think. When someone comes forward and is an individual, such as a Lady Gaga or a Katy Perry, people respond to them because there is that sense of innocence. It's obviously dress up and theatre. I never lost that I think part of that is growing up gay and part is growing up overweight. You never lose that, and I never want to lose touch with that whimsy, that sense of innocence. I also love the reaction it elicits in people. I like that it makes other people happy.

Brad Goreski

The person who takes power will never be happy with those things they gain. They have lost their essential balance and innocence. And without innocence, nothing can further, as they say in the I Ching.

Frederick Lenz

The innocence of those who grind the faces of the poor, but refrain from pinching the bottoms of their neighbour's wives! The innocence of Ford, the innocence of Rockefeller! The nineteenth century was the Age of Innocence--that sort of innocence. With the result that we're now almost ready to say that a man is seldom more innocently employed than when making love.

Aldous Huxley

We must face the fact that we are on the brink of times when man may be able to magnify his intellectual and inventive capability, just as in the nineteenth century he used machines to magnify his physical capacity. Again, as then, our innocence is lost. And again, of course, the innocence, once lost, cannot be regained. The loss demands attention, not denial.

Christopher Alexander

There are no moments more painful for a parent than those in which you contemplate your child's perfect innocence of some imminent pain, misfortune, or sorrow. That innocence (like every kind of innocence children have) is rooted in their trust of you, one that you will shortly be obliged to betray; whether it is fair or not, whether you can help it or not, you are always the ultimate guarantor or destroyer of that innocence.

Michael Chabon

One of the things I loved about my childhood was that I didn't feel like I lost my innocence too young, like some children these days.

Danielle de Niese

When government gets too big, freedom is lost. Government is supposed to be the servant. But when a government can tax the people with no limit or restraint on what the government can take, then the government has become the master.

Ronald Reagan

I feel like when you have an unauthorized police badge and something that looks like it could be a concealed weapon in the small of your back that when you, someone crosses you, pisses you off, road rage, I think just the slight badge and the little moving away of the jacket and not losing eye contact does amazing things.