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

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...It would be more consistent that we call [the Bible] the work of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.
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Thus commerce, though in itself a moral nullity, has had a considerable influence in tempering the human mind....he trades with the same countries ...(that he) would have gone to war with.
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A share in two revolutions is living to some purpose.
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That there are men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the quarrels of Nations is as shocking as it is true.
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Prophesying is lying professionally.
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It can only be by blinding the understanding of man, and making him believe that government is some wonderful mysterious thing, that excessive revenues are obtained. Monarchy is well calculated to ensure this end. It is the popery of government a thing kept up to amuse the ignorant, and quiet them into taxes.
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Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make principles he can only discover them.
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No man is prejudiced in favor of a thing, knowing it to be wrong. He is attached to it on the belief of its being right and when he sees it is not so, the prejudice will be gone.
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Wrong cannot have a legal descendant.
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I have always strenuously supported the right of every man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.
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The instant formal government is abolished, society begins to act. A general association takes place, and common interest produces common security.
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... a thirst for power is the natural disease of monarchy.
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The American constitutions were to liberty, what a grammar is to language: they define its parts of speech, and practically construct them into syntax
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I die content, I die for the liberty of my country.
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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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Ah, reader, put thy trust in thy creator, and thou wilt be safe but if thou trustest to the book called the scriptures thou trustest to the rotten staff of fable and falsehood.
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If the present generation, or any other, are disposed to be slaves, it does not lessen the right of the succeeding generation to be free: wrongs cannot have a legal descent.
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What at first was plunder assumed the softer name of revenue.
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I detest the Bible as I detest everything that is cruel.
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It has been the scheme of the Christian Church, and of all the other invented systems of religion, to hold man in ignorance of the Creator, as it is of Government to hold man in ignorance of his rights. The systems of the one are as false as those of the other, and are calculated for mutual support.
Thomas Paine