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The instant formal government is abolished, society begins to act. A general association takes place, and common interest produces common security.

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
Produce
Abolished
Government
Security
Produces
Takes
Formal
Interest
Association
Society
Instant
Common
Begins
Motivation
Pain
General
Place

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Wrong cannot have a legal descendant.
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Suspicion is the companion of mean souls, and the bane of all good society.
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It is from our enemies that we often gain excellent maxims, and are frequently surprised into reason by their mistakes.
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Priests and conjurors are of the same trade.
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It is an affront to treat falsehood with complaisance.
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...It would be more consistent that we call [the Bible] the work of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.
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The representative system of government is calculated to produce the wisest laws, by collecting wisdom where it can be found.
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When authors and critics talk of the sublime, they see not how nearly it borders on the ridiculous.
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Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifiying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity.
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The duty of man is not a wilderness of turnpike gates, through which he is to pass by tickets from one to the other. It is plain and simple, and consists but of two points--his duty God, which every man must feel and, with respect to his neighbor, to do as he would be done by.
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Man did not enter society to be worse off, or to have fewer rights, but rather to have those rights better secured
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