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We have it in our power to begin the world over again.

Thomas Paine

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Thomas Paine
Age: 72 †
Born: 1737
Born: January 29
Died: 1809
Died: June 8
Author
Entrepreneur
Journalist
Opinion Journalist
Philosopher
Politician
Prosaist
Writer
Thetford
Norfolk
Motivation
Begin
Change
Power
World

More quotes by Thomas Paine

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It will be proper to take a review of the several sources from which governments have arisen, and on which they have been founded.
Thomas Paine
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My country is wherever liberty lives.
Thomas Paine
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When extraordinary power and extraordinary pay are allotted to any individual in a government, he becomes the center, round which every kind of corruption generates and forms.
Thomas Paine
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The balance of power is the scale of peace. The same balance would be preserved were all the world not destitute of arms, for all would be alike but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside ... Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them ... the weak will become prey to the strong.
Thomas Paine
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The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the study of nothing.
Thomas Paine
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Not all the treasures of the world, so far as I believe, could have induced me to support an offensive war, for I think it murder but if a thief breaks into my house, burns and destroys my property, and kills or threatens to kill me, or those that are in it, and to bind me in all cases whatsoever to his absolute will, am I to suffer it?
Thomas Paine
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Character is much easier kept than recovered.
Thomas Paine
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Let them call me rebel, and welcome, I feel no concern from it.
Thomas Paine
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Ignorance is of a peculiar nature once dispelled, it is impossible to reestablish it. It is not originally a thing of itself, but is only the absence of knowledge and though man may be kept ignorant, he cannot be made ignorant.
Thomas Paine
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The case, however, is, that the Bible will not bear examination in any part of it, which it would do if it was the Word of God. Those who most believe it are those who know least about it, and priests always take care to keep the inconsistent and contradictory parts out of sight.
Thomas Paine
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Reason and Ignorance, the opposites of each other, influence the great bulk of mankind. If either of these can be rendered sufficiently extensive in a country, the machinery of Government goes easily on. Reason obeys itself and Ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.
Thomas Paine
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A single legislature, on account of the superabundance of its power, and the uncontrolled rabidity of its execution, becomes as dangerous to the principles of liberty as that of a despotic monarch.
Thomas Paine
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Now, which am I to believe, a book that any impostor might make and call the Word of God, or the creation itself which none but an Almighty Power could make? For the Bible says one thing and the creation says the contrary. The Bible represents God with all the passions of a mortal, and the creation proclaims him with all the attributes of a God.
Thomas Paine
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It is the direction and not the magnitude which is to be taken into consideration.
Thomas Paine
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The aristocracy are not the farmers who work the land, and raise the produce, but are the mere consumers of the rent and when compared with the active world, are the drones, a seraglio of males, who neither collect the honey nor form the hive, but exist only for lazy enjoyment.
Thomas Paine
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I have always strenuously supported the right of every man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.
Thomas Paine
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These are the times that try men's souls.
Thomas Paine
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The strength and power of despotism consists wholly in the fear of resistance.
Thomas Paine
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Arms, like laws, discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe and preserve order.
Thomas Paine
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Wisdom is not the purchase of a day, and it is no wonder that we should err at the first setting off.
Thomas Paine