Time makes more converts than reason

Thomas Paine’s expression “Time makes more converts than reason” condenses the introduction’s account of how political convictions change: custom can give a wrong practice the appearance of rightness, while time may wear down the resistance that argument encounters. It turns the delay in accepting Paine’s challenge into part of his argument, not a reason to abandon it.

The force of custom

Paine begins by acknowledging that the sentiments in his pages may not yet be fashionable enough to win general approval. A long habit of not thinking something wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right. When that appearance is challenged, custom raises what Paine calls a formidable outcry in its defense. The expression’s “converts” are therefore people whose judgment has been shaped by familiarity and convention, rather than by a settled examination of the political claims at issue.

Time and persuasion

The sentence follows Paine’s prediction that the tumult will subside. Its contrast is pointed: reason may identify the grounds for reconsidering an established belief, but time is presented as the more effective force in bringing people over. The claim does not say that reason is irrelevant; it distinguishes the work of making a case from the slower change in public acceptance. The brevity of the expression gives that distinction the character of a maxim.

Place in the argument

Paine’s introduction connects resistance to custom with the political circumstances of his country. He argues that prolonged and violent abuse of power can call the right to exercise that power into question, and that the people, grievously oppressed by the combination of the King of England and Parliament, have a right to examine both their pretensions and reject either usurpation. Against this background, the expression casts initial opposition to his sentiments as a foreseeable effect of habit, while leaving open the possibility that sustained reconsideration will alter what appears legitimate.

Paine also says that he has avoided personal praise or blame in the pages that follow. His focus is on political pretensions and public principles, not individual triumphs. The expression thus helps establish the introduction’s patient, impersonal posture: resistance is expected, but the apparent authority of custom is neither permanent nor proof of rightness.