The more men have to lose, the less willing are they to venture. The rich are in general slaves to fear, and submit to courtly power with the trembli… - Thomas Paine

The more men have to lose, the less willing are they to venture.

The rich are in general slaves to fear, and submit to courtly power with the trembling duplicity of a spaniel.

Lead, follow, or get out of the way.

Statues of brass and marble will perish; and statues made in imitation of them are not the same statues, nor the same workmanship, any more than the copy of a picture is the same picture. But print and reprint a thought a thousand times over, and that with materials of any kind, carve it in wood, or engrave it on stone, the thought is eternally and identically the same thought in every case. It has a capacity of unimpaired existence, unaffected by change of matter, and is essentially distinct, and of a nature different from every thing else that we know of, or can conceive. If then the thing produced has in itself a capacity of being immortal, it is more than a token that the power that produced it, which is the self-same thing as consciousness of existence, can be immortal also; and that as independently of the matter it was first connected with, and as the thought is of the printing or writing it first appeared in.

One of the strongest natural proofs of the folly of hereditary right in kings, is, that nature disapproves it, otherwise she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule by giving mankind an ass for a lion.