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To say that any people are not fit for freedom, is to make poverty their choice, and to say they had rather be loaded with taxes than not.

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
Rather
Loaded
Freedom
Patriotic
Make
Fit
People
Motivation
Taxes
Choice
Poverty
Choices

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If the present generation, or any other, are disposed to be slaves, it does not lessen the right of the succeeding generation to be free: wrongs cannot have a legal descent.
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Now is the seedtime of continental union, faith and honor. The least fracture now, will be like a name engraved with the point of a pin on the tender rind of a young oak the wound would enlarge with the tree, and posterity read in it full grown characters.
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It is the madness of folly, to expect mercy from those who have refused to do justice and even mercy, where conquest is the object, is only a trick of war the cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violence of the wolf.
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I fear not, I see not reason for fear. In the end we will be the victors. For though at times the flame of liberty may cease to shine, the ember will never expire.
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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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In the early ages of the world, according to the scripture chronology, there were no kings the consequence of which was there were no wars it is the pride of kings which throws mankind into confusion.
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The New Testament, they tell us, is founded upon the prophecies of the Old if so, it must follow the fate of its foundation.
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Action and care will in time wear down the strongest frame, but guilt and melancholy are poisons of quick dispatch.
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It is a general idea, that when taxes are once laid on, they are never taken off.
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We must be compelled to hold this doctrine to be false, and the old and new law called the Old and New Testament, to be impositions, fables and forgeries.
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Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man.
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Immediate necessity makes many things convenient, which if continued would grow into oppressions.
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The greatest remedy for anger is delay.
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To believe that God created a plurality of worlds, at least as numerous as what we call stars, renders the Christian faith at once little and ridiculous and scatters it in the mind like feathers in the air.
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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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But such is the irresistable nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants is the liberty of appearing.
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He who is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death.
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Ah, reader, put thy trust in thy creator, and thou wilt be safe but if thou trustest to the book called the scriptures thou trustest to the rotten staff of fable and falsehood.
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But if objects for gratitude and admiration are our desire, do they not present themselves every hour to our eyes?
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A little matter will move a party, but it must be something great that moves a nation.
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