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

More quotes by Thomas Paine

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Those who expect to reap the blessing of freedom must undertake to support it.
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It is painful to behold a man employing his talents to corrupt himself.
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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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Suspicion and persecution are weeds of the same dunghill, and flourish best together.
Thomas Paine
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The people of America are a people of property almost every man is a freeholder.
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The idea of hereditary legislators is as inconsistent as that of hereditary judges, or hereditary juries and as absurd as an hereditary mathematician, or an hereditary wise man and as ridiculous as an hereditary poet-laureat.
Thomas Paine
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The Almighty implanted in us these inextinguishable feelings for good and wise purposes. They are the guardians of His image in our heart. They distinguish us from the herd of common animals.
Thomas Paine
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Men did not make the earth... It is the value of the improvements only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property. ... Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds.
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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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When it becomes necessary to do a thing, the whole heart and soul should go into the measure, or not attempt it.
Thomas Paine
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...the Bible is such a book of lies and contradictions there is no knowing which part to believe or whether any.
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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.
Thomas Paine
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When authors and critics talk of the sublime, they see not how nearly it borders on the ridiculous.
Thomas Paine
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All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
Thomas Paine
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If any generation of men ever possessed the right of dictating the mode by which the world should be governed for ever, it was the first generation that existed and if that generation did it not, no succeeding generation can show any authority for doing it, nor can set any up.
Thomas Paine
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The Bill of Rights should contain the general principles of natural and civil liberty. It should be to a community what the eternal laws and obligations of morality are to the conscience. It should be unalterable by any human power.
Thomas Paine
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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.
Thomas Paine
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Is it not a species of blasphemy to call the New Testament revealed religion, when we see in it such contradictions and absurdities.
Thomas Paine
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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.
Thomas Paine
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Priests and conjurors are of the same trade.
Thomas Paine