Thomas Paine

[Age of Reason and the 'Introduction' by Philip Foner]

About Paine (per Foner):

Anti-slavery writings starting in 1775.

With Ben Franklin, co-authored the Pennsylvania constitution, "by far the most advanced state constitution adopted during the American revolution." (included universal [male] suffrage, democratic representation, religious freedom)

Later defended attacks on the Pennsylvania constitution's "cardinal sin of allowing the common people according to their number a voice in their government."

In the Pennsylvania legislature in 1780, wrote the "first legislative measure passed in America for the emancipation of slaves."

Helped found the Bank of Pennsylvania.

Aided the French revolution — advised on the constitution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, wrote Rights of Man to answer critics.

Advocated public education, welfare, pensions, funeral expenses, progressive income tax, property tax, treaties, reduction of the military (esp. the navy).

Became convinced that to preserve republican principles, it was necessary to destroy the priesthood.

Was a Deist, not an atheist.

Introduced the concept of a guaranteed minimum income through a one-time inheritance tax on landowners.

 - - - - - - - Paine quotes from Foner's Introduction - - - - - - 

[Paine himself said he went] marching through the Christian forest with an axe.

I seldom passed five minutes ... in which I did not acquire some knowledge.

Why is it that scarcely any are executed but the poor?

Primogeniture [is] unnatural and unjust and a great waste of national wealth.

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - [from Age of Reason] - - - - - - - - - 

The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason.

I do not believe in the creed ... [of] any church ... My own mind is my own church.

A revolution in the system of government would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion.

Organized religion was set up to terrify and enslave mankind and monopolize power and profit.

Every church accuses other churches of unbelief. I disbelieve them all.

[T]he Church has set up a religion of pomp and of revenue, in pretended imitation of a person whose life was humility and poverty.

[A]ll my opponents resort to ... Scripture evidence and Bible authority.... [They] have agreed in nothing but that Paine understands [the Bible] not.

Richard Rorty

From Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity

Once upon a time, we felt a need to worship something which lay beyond the visible world. Later we tried to substitute a love of truth for a love of God. Later, a love of ourselves. We should try to get to the point where we no longer worship anything.

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The point of social organization is to let everybody have a chance at self-creation to the best of his or her abilities. That goal requires peace, wealth, and freedom.

Jane Rule

[From A Hot-Eyed Moderate]

We are as much rule- as tool-making creatures because few of our behavior patterns are handed to us in our genes.

...

The human appetite for justice is so often thwarted in life that one of the chief activities of fantasy is to punish or reward those people who deserve but seem to receive neither in life. We are so frustrated by not only the lack of plot but also by lunatic accident that we invent heaven and hell to correct the meaninglessness and error in this world.

Richard Rorty

I wrote this down (in 1981) as “From a Rorty rebuttal”

The fallacious inference from 'better for mastering' to 'more objective' is just a quirky, though central, feature of Western metaphysical tradition.... 

Liking Bohr and disliking Skinner ... [is just] expressing a preference for predicting rocks over doing anything else with them and for doing other things with people over predicting their  behavior. Yes, Skinner is dotty, but physicists are equally dotty to think they view nature naked, unveiled by human concerns.

Richard Rorty

From Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (paraphrased)

Personhood is a matter of decision rather than knowledge, an acceptance of another being into fellowship rather than a recognition of a common essence.

Knowledge of what pain is like or what red is like is attributed to beings on the basis of their potential membership in the community. Thus babies and the more attractive sorts of animal are credited with “having feelings” rather than (like machines or spiders) “merely responding to stimuli.” 

To say that babies know what heat is like, but not what the motion of molecules is like is just to say that we can fairly readily imagine them opening their mouths and remarking on the former, but not the latter. To say that a gadget that says “red” appropriately doesn't know what red is like is to say that we cannot readily imagine continuing a conversation with the gadget....

Attribution of pre-linguistic awareness is merely a courtesy extended to potential or imagined fellow-speakers of our language. Moral prohibitions against hurting babies and the better-looking sorts of animals are not based on their possessions of feeling. It is, if anything, the other way around....

Rationality about denying civil rights to morons or fetuses or aboriginal tribes or blacks or Martians or trees is a myth. The emotions we have toward borderline cases depend on the liveliness of our imagination, and conversely. 

Ursula LeGuin

From No Time To Spare

Are you living your secret desires? ... I have none, my desires are flagrant.

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Capitalism thinks it's adaptable, but if it only has one stratagem, endless growth, the limit of its adaptability is irrevocably set. And we have reached that limit... [I]ncreasingly, all economic growth benefits only the rich.... Growth capitalism provides security for none but the strongest profiteers.

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I don't believe in Darwin's theory of evolution, I accept it. It isn't a matter of faith, but of evidence.... I wish we could stop using the word belief in matters of fact, leaving it where it belongs, in matters of religious faith and secular hope. I believe we'd avoid a lot of unnecessary pain if we did so.