Thomas Paine, Common Sense (R. Bell, Philadelphia, 1776) Front Cover..Man knows no master save HEAVEN, Or those whom Choice and common Good ordain.
Frederic Bastiat, The Law (Irvington-on-Hudson, New York, 1850) p. 2.Life, liberty and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforhand that caused men to make laws in the first place.
Thomas Paine, Common Sense (R. Bell, Philadelphia, 1776) Introduction.Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides.
Reinhold Niebuhr, Andrew J. (INT) Bacevich, The Irony of American History (University of Chicago Press, 2008) p. 21.Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak, and that it is doing God’s service when it is violating all His laws.