Politics & Power Quote by Thomas Paine

Paine draws a razor line between what people build together and what they tolerate to keep that togetherness from collapsing. "Society" is framed as organic and generous: the web of mutual aid, trade, affection, and shared norms that makes life bigger than the individual. "Government", by contrast, is the apparatus we invent because we are not angels - an admission of human fracture dressed up as civic engineering. The sting is in his grading system: even at its "best stage" government never graduates into virtue. It remains an instrument, not a moral achievement.

The subtext is revolutionary triage. Paine isn't selling chaos; he's selling skepticism with a purpose. By calling government a "necessary evil", he strips it of sacred aura and relocates legitimacy to the people and their associations, not to crowns, constitutions, or inherited offices. That move matters in the late 18th century, when monarchy still claimed divine sanction and state power was easily confused with social order itself. Paine insists you can love social cohesion and still mistrust the state.

The final clause - "in its worst state an intolerable one" - is a political accelerant. "Intolerable" is not descriptive; it's a moral permission slip. If government is merely a tool, then a malfunctioning tool should be repaired, replaced, or thrown out. The rhetoric works because it feels plainspoken while smuggling a radical recalibration: loyalty is owed upward only insofar as power serves the downward, everyday blessings of society.