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Is it more probable that nature should go out of her course, or that a man should tell a lie? We have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course but we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told in the same time.

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
Good
Courses
Skepticism
Never
Course
Reporters
Men
Lying
Miracle
Time
Religion
Atheism
Tell
Lies
Nature
Told
Reason
Millions
Believe
Seen
Probable

More quotes by Thomas Paine

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All men can understand what representation is and that it must necessarily include a variety of knowledge and talents.
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It is with a pious fraud as with a bad action it begets a calamitous necessity of going on.
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Let them call me rebel, and welcome, I feel no concern from it.
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The cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violence of the wolf.
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I call not upon a few, but upon all: not on this state or that state, but on every state up and help us lay your shoulders to the wheel better have too much force than too little, when so great an object is at stake.
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The strength and power of despotism consists wholly in the fear of resistance.
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Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance.
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Arms, like laws, discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe and preserve order.
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The reformation was preceded by the discovery of America, as if the Almighty graciously meant to open a sanctuary to the persecuted in future years, when home should afford neither friendship nor safety.
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All the religions known in the world are founded, so far as they relate to man or the unity of man, as being all of one degree. Whether in heaven or in hell, or in whatever state man may be supposed to exist hereafter, the good and the bad are the only distinctions.
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Commerce diminishes the spirit, both of patriotism and military defence.
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Accustom a people to believe that priests, or any other class of men can forgive sins and you will have sins in abundance.
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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.
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His [Jesus'] historians, having brought him into the world in a supernatural manner, were obliged to take him out again in the same manner, or the first part of the story must have fallen to the ground.
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Government is a necessary evil
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We have it in our power to begin the world over again.
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A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.
Thomas Paine
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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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Change of ministers amounts to nothing. One goes out, another comes in, and still the same measures, vices, and extravagances are pursued. It signifies not who is minister. The defect lies in the system. The foundation and superstructure of the government is bad. Prop it as you please, it continually sinks and ever will.
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...the individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.
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