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Human nature is not of itself vicious.

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
Vicious
Motivation
Nature
Human
Humans

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And to read the Bible without horror, we must undo everything that is tender, sympathizing and benevolent in the heart of man.
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It is important that we should never lose sight of this distinction. We must not confuse the peoples with their governments.
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Men should not petition for rights, but take them
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Time makes more converts than reason.
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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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Civilization, or that which is so called, has operated two ways to make one part of society more affluent and the other part more wretched than would have been the lot of either in a natural state.
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Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all cases as the ages and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies.
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War ought to be no man's wish.
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Lay then the axe to the root, and teach governments humanity. It is their sanguinary punishments which corrupt mankind.
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And as to you, Sir, treacherous in private friendship and a hypocrite in public life, the world will be puzzled to decide whether you are an apostate or an impostor whether you have abandoned good principles, or whether you ever had any.
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It is painful to behold a man employing his talents to corrupt himself.
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Government without a constitution, is a power without a right.
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The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum.
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Government is a necessary evil
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Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.
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Mingling religion with politics may be disavowed and reprobated by every inhabitant of America.
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Could the straggling thoughts of individuals be collected, they would frequently form materials for wise and able men to improve into useful matter.
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We ought therefore to suspect that a great mass of information respecting the Bible, and the introduction of it into the world, has been suppressed by the united tyranny of Church and State, for the purpose of keeping people in ignorance, and which ought to be known.
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The strength and power of despotism consists wholly in the fear of resistance.
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It is the fable of Jesus Christ, as told in the New Testament, and the wild and visionary doctrine raised thereon, against which I contend. The story, taking it as it is told, is blasphemously obscene.
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