A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.

Thomas Paine wrote this line in the opening section of his revolutionary pamphlet *Common Sense* (1776), composed in the months leading up to the American colonies’ break with Britain. Paine’s aim was to jolt readers out of deference to inherited institutions—especially monarchy and the colonial relationship to the Crown—by arguing that custom can dull moral and political judgment. The sentence appears as part of his broader claim that long-established arrangements often persist not because they are just, but because people have grown accustomed to them and stopped scrutinizing them. In that context, the remark functions as a rhetorical spur toward independence and political reform.

Paine argues that familiarity can masquerade as legitimacy: when people cease to question an injustice, its very persistence begins to look like proof of its rightness. The “superficial appearance” is crucial—custom supplies a veneer of normality, not genuine moral warrant. The line captures an Enlightenment insistence on reasoned evaluation over tradition, warning that unexamined habits can anesthetize conscience and make oppressive systems seem natural. It also explains why reform is psychologically difficult: challenging a long-standing wrong feels like attacking “the way things are,” even when the status quo rests on mere repetition rather than principle.