Some weekend thoughts from Thomas Paine

"When in countries that are called civilized, we see age going to the workhouse and youth to the gallows, something must be wrong in the system of government. It would seem by the exterior appearance of such countries that all was happiness; but there lies hidden from the eye of common observation a mass of wretchedness that has scarcely any other chance than to expire in poverty or infamy. Its entrance into life is marked with the presage of its fate, and until this is remedied, it is in vain to punish."

"Ye who sit in ease and solace yourselves in plenty and who say to yourselves 'Are we not well off?' Have ye not thought of these things? When ye do, ye will cease to speak and feel for yourselves alone"

"...that there are men in all countries that get their living by war and by keeping up the quarrels of Nations is as shocking as it is true; but when those who are concerned in the government of a country make it their study to sow discord and cultivate prejudices between nations, it becomes the more unpardonable."

"When we consider the calamities of war and the miseries it inflicts on the human species, surely there is something in the heart of man that calls upon him to think...Let it be heard and let man learn to feel that the true greatness of a nation is founded on principles of humanity...War involves in its progress such a train of unforseen and unsupposed circumstances, such a combination of foreign matters that no human being can calculate the result".