Faith & Spirit Quote by Thomas Paine

Paine’s tolerance comes disguised as a compliment, and that’s the trick. “Every religion is good” sounds like an ecumenical embrace until the sentence quietly swaps the center of gravity from God to conduct. Religion, in this frame, isn’t sacred truth to be defended; it’s a tool to be judged by outcomes. The standard is not doctrine but behavior, not revelation but public virtue. That utilitarian pivot is pure Paine: moral legitimacy comes from what improves human life, not what claims divine authority.

The subtext is sharper than the civility suggests. By saying he knows of no religion that “instructs him to be bad,” Paine implies two things at once: first, that religions largely agree on baseline ethics; second, that the real trouble isn’t what religions teach, but what institutions and believers permit themselves to do anyway. It’s an early diagnosis of a recurring political problem: when faith becomes a badge of identity or a lever of power, people can commit cruelty while insisting they’re still obeying the “good” parts. Paine’s line anticipates that hypocrisy and tries to disarm it by insisting on the only criterion that matters: are you making people better?

Context matters. Paine is writing in an age of revolutions, when churches often sat close to the state and “orthodoxy” could mean social control. The quote offers a radical compromise: keep whatever inspires decency, discard the sectarian gatekeeping. It’s toleration with teeth - less kumbaya than quality control.