Quote

Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.

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
Happiness
Latter
Distinctions
Last
Creates
Encourages
Vices
Affections
Punisher
Government
Affection
Intercourse
Restraining
Firsts
Former
Wickedness
Negatively
First
Wants
Positively
Uniting
Society
Produced
Promotes
Lasts
Distinction
Patron

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He, who survives his reputation, lives out of despite himself, like a man listening to his own reproach.
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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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The danger to which the success of revolutions is most exposed, is that of attempting them before the principles on which they proceed, and the advantages to result from them, are sufficiently seen and understood.
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Some people can be reasoned into sense, and others must be shocked into it.
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He who takes nature for his guide, is not easily beaten out of his argument
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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.
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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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The Christian system of religion is an outrage on common sense.
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Titles are like a magicians wand which circumscribe human facility and prevent us from living the lives of man.
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To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.
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Persecution is not an original feature in any religion but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law.
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If anything had or could have a value equal to gold and silver, it would require no tender law and if it had not that value it ought not to have such a law and, therefore, all tender laws are tyrannical and unjust and calculated to support fraud and oppression.
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Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess.
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...Thomas did not believe the resurrection [John 20:25], and, as they say, would not believe without having ocular and manual demonstration himself. So neither will I, and the reason is equally as good for me, and for every other person, as for Thomas.
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Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.
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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.
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The moral duty of man consists of imitatingthe moral goodness and beneficence of God,manifested in the creation, toward all His creatures.
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A government of our own is our natural right and when a man seriously reflects on the precariousness of human affairs, he will become convinced, that it is infinitely wiser and safer, to form a constitution of our own in a cool deliberate manner, while we have it in our power, than to trust such an interesting event to time and chance.
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No nation ought to be without a debt. A national debt is a national bond and when it bears no interest, is in no case a grievance.
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