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To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.

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
Philosophy
Holding
Administering
Humanity
Arguing
Endeavoring
Use
Scripture
Renounced
Reason
Atheist
Stubbornness
Men
Medicine
Convert
Like
Authority
Argue
Whose
Contempt
Dead
Consists

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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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They took care to represent government as a thing made up of mysteries, which only themselves understood, and they hid from the understanding of the nation, the only thing that was beneficial to know, namely, that government is nothing more than a national association acting on the principles of society.
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To possess ourselves of a clear idea of what government is, or ought to be, we must trace it to its origin.
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The Vatican is a dagger in the heart of Italy.
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The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.
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Character is much easier kept than recovered.
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...the true greatness of a nation is founded on principles of humanity.
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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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The mind, in discovering truths, acts in the same manner as it acts through the eye in discovering objects when once any object has been seen, it is impossible to put the mind back to the same condition it was in before it saw it.
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Take away from Genesis the belief that Moses was the author, on which only the strange believe that it is the word of God has stood, and there remains nothing of Genesis but an anonymous book of stories, fables, and traditionary or invented absurdities, or of downright lies.
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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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There is a happiness in Deism, when rightly understood, that is not to be found inany other system of religion. All other systems have something in them that either shock our reason, or are repugnant to it, and man, if he thinks at all, must stifle his reason in order to force himself to believe them.
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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.
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Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself.
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A government on the principles on which constitutional governments arising out of society are established, cannot have the right of altering itself. If it had, it would be arbitrary. It might make itself what it pleased and wherever such a right is set up, it shows there is no constitution.
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The art of publicity is a black art but it has come to stay, and every year adds to its potency.
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As my object was not myself, I set out with the determination, and happily with the disposition, of not being moved by praise or censure, friendship or calumny, nor of being drawn from my purpose by any personal altercation and the man who cannot do this, is not fit for a public character.
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I die content, I die for the liberty of my country.
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All Of Us Might Wish At Times That We Lived In A More Tranquil World....(yet) Our Times Are Challenging And Filled With Opportunity.
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That which we obtain too easily, we esteem too lightly.
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