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Let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarcy, that in America the law is King. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King and there ought to be no other.

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
World
Kings
Crown
Ought
Crowns
Law
Placed
Free
Governments
America
Absolutes
Government
Absolute
May
King
Thereon
Country
Countries
Approve

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Moderation in temper is always a virtue but moderation in principle is always a vice.
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A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.
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The artificial noble shrinks into a dwarf before the noble of nature and in the few instances (for there are some in all countries) in whom nature, as by a miracle, has survived in aristocracy, those men despise it.
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These are the times that try men's souls.
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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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When authors and critics talk of the sublime, they see not how nearly it borders on the ridiculous.
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The Christian religion is a parody on the worship of the sun, in which they put a man called Christ in the place of the sun, and pay him the adoration originally payed to the sun.
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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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There is something in meanness which excites a species of resentment that never subsides, and something in cruelty which stirs up the heart to the highest agony of human hatred.
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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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Better fare hard with good men than feast it with bad.
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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.
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Man is not the enemy of man, but through the medium of a false system of Government. Instead, therefore, of exclaiming against the ambition of kings, the exclamation should be directed against the principle of such governments and instead of seeking to reform the individual, the wisdom of a nation should apply itself to reform the system.
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Mystery is the antagonist of truth. It is a fog of human invention, that obscures truth, and represents it in distortion.
Thomas Paine
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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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We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in.
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The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery, for slavery consists in being subject to the will of another, and he that has not a vote in the election of representatives is in this case.
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THE WORD OF GOD IS THE CREATION WE BEHOLD: And it is in this word, which no human invention can counterfeit or alter, that God speaketh universally to man.
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The end of all political associations is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man and these rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance of oppression.
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The balance of power is the scale of peace. The same balance would be preserved were all the world not destitute of arms, for all would be alike but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside ... Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them ... the weak will become prey to the strong.
Thomas Paine