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The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum.

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
Atheism
Complexion
Modern
Asylum
Religious
Asylums
Religion
Bipolar
Whole
Jerusalem
World
Lunatic
Dues
Absence

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The Book of Job and the 19th Psalm, which even the Church admits to be more ancient than the chronological order in which they stand in the book called the Bible, are theological orations conformable to the original system of theology.
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It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving, it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.
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There is something in corruption which, like a jaundiced eye, transfers the color of itself to the object it looks upon, and sees everything stained and impure.
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Peace, which costs nothing, is attended with infinitely more advantage than any victory with all its expence.
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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.
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Commerce diminishes the spirit, both of patriotism and military defence.
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Government has no right to make itself a party in any debates respecting the principles or mode of forming or of changing, constitutions. It is not for the benefit of those who exercise the powers of government, that constitutions, and the governments issuing from them, are established.
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I believe in one God, and no more and I hope for happiness beyond this life.
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Compassion, the fairest associate of the heart.
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One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests.
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Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance.
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The burden of the national debt consists not in its being so many millions, or so many hundred millions, but in the quantity of taxes collected every year to pay the interest. If this quantity continue the same, the burden of the national debt is the same to all intents and purposes, be the capital more or less.
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The reformation was preceded by the discovery of America, as if the Almighty graciously meant to open a sanctuary to the persecuted in future years, when home should afford neither friendship nor safety.
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The United States of America will sound as pompously in the world or in history as The Kingdom of Great Britain.
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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.
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Government without a constitution, is a power without a right.
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When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to [profess] things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.
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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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Prejudice, like the spider, makes everywhere its home. It has neither taste nor choice of place, and all that it requires is room. If the one prepares her food by poisoning it to her palate and her use, the other does the same. Prejudice may be denominated the spider of the mind.
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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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