A Quote by Thomas Paine
Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively 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.
Quote Topics
Quote Author
Related Quotes
Society is produced by our wants and government by our wickedness.
The progress of science has always been the result of a close interplay between our concepts of the universe and our observations on nature. The former can only evolve out of the latter and yet the latter is also conditioned greatly by the former. Thus in our exploration of nature, the interplay between our concepts and our observations may sometimes lead to totally unexpected aspects among already familiar phenomena.
As all our wickedness consists in turning away from our Creator, so all our goodness consists in uniting ourselves with Him.
To exterminate our popular vices is a work of far more importance to the character and happiness of our citizens than any other improvements in our system of education.
Our citizenship in the United States is our national character. Our citizenship in any particular state is only our local distinction. By the latter we are known at home, by the former to the world. Our great title is AMERICANS.
The blue light emanating from our cell phones, our tablets and our laptops is playing havoc on our brain chemicals: our serotonin, our melatonin. It's screwing up our sleep patterns, our happiness, our appetites, our carbohydrate cravings.
Our worst fears, like our greatest hopes, are not outside our powers, and we can come in the end to triumph over the former and to achieve the latter.
To communicate is our chief business; society and friendship our chief delights; and reading, not to acquire knowledge, not to earn a living, but to extend our intercourse beyond our own time and province.
In this choice of inheritance we have given to our frame of polity the image of a relation in blood; binding up the constitution of our country with our dearest domestic ties; adopting our fundamental laws into the bosom of our family affections; keeping inseparable and cherishing with the warmth of all their combined and mutually reflected charities, our state, our hearths, our sepulchres, and our altars.
Consciousness creates the body. Our bodies are made up of dynamic energy systems that are affected by our diets, relationships, heredity, and culture and the interplay of all these factors and activities... We cannot hope to reclaim our bodily wisdom and inherent ability to create health without first understanding the influence of our society on how we think about and care for our bodies.
It is my view that our society can be no more stable than the foundation of individual family units upon which it rests. Our government, our institutions, our schools...indeed, our way of life are dependent on healthy marriages and loyalty to the vulnerable little children around our feet.
Our vices always lie in the direction of our virtues, and in their best estate are but plausible imitations of the latter.
We are not commanded (or forbidden) to love our mates, our children, our friends, our country because such affections come naturally to us and are good in themselves, although we may corrupt them. We are commanded to love our neighbor because our natural attitude toward the other is one of either indifference or hostility.
First of all, Scripture draws our attention to this, that if we want ease and tranquility in our lives, we should resign ourselves and all that we have to the will of God, and at the same time we should surrender our affections to him as our Conqueror and Overlord.
As in our lives so also in our studies, it is most becoming and most wise, so to temper gravity with cheerfulness, that the former may not imbue our minds with melancholy, nor the latter degenerate into licentiousness.
Stoutly as we may affirm that our disasters and vices are chargeable to luck, we never dream of ascribing our meritorious deeds, in the slightest degree to its agency. In such cases we quite unconsciously blink out of sight the magic power of the latter principle, so wondrous and all-controlling in its influence at other times, and coolly appropriate to ourselves not merely the lion's share, but the whole glory of our position.
Related Authors
Aung San Suu Kyi Quotes
Burmese
Activist
Bill Ayers Quotes
American
Activist
Edward Snowden Quotes
American
Activist
Elizabeth Cady Stanton Quotes
American
Activist
Emma Goldman Quotes
Russian
Activist
Gloria Steinem Quotes
American
Activist
Jesse Jackson Quotes
American
Activist
Julian Assange Quotes
Australian
Activist
Louis Farrakhan Quotes
American
Activist
Malala Yousafzai Quotes
Pakistani
Activist
Malcolm X Quotes
American
Activist
Michael Moore Quotes
American
Activist
Noam Chomsky Quotes
American
Activist
Peace Pilgrim Quotes
American
Activist
Shane Claiborne Quotes
American
Activist
Van Jones Quotes
American
Activist