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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.

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
Important
Peoples
Never
Governments
Distinction
Sight
Lose
Loses
Government
Must
Confuse

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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]ll churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim, are simply human inventions. They use fear to enslave us. They are a monopoly for power and profit.
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Wisdom is not the purchase of a day, and it is no wonder that we should err at the first setting off.
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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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He, who survives his reputation, lives out of despite himself, like a man listening to his own reproach.
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Where knowledge is a duty, ignorance is a crime.
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... a thirst for power is the natural disease of monarchy.
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Immediate necessity makes many things convenient, which if continued would grow into oppressions.
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Government is a necessary evil
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A man may write himself out of reputation when nobody else can do it.
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Reason and Ignorance, the opposites of each other, influence the great bulk of mankind. If either of these can be rendered sufficiently extensive in a country, the machinery of Government goes easily on. Reason obeys itself and Ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.
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Christianity is the strangest religion ever set up, for it committed a murder upon Jesus in order to redeem mankind from the sin of eating an apple.
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If those to whom power is delegated do well, they will be respected if not, they will be despised.
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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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We hold the moral obligation of providing for old age, helpless infancy, and poverty is far superior to that of supplying the invented wants of courtly extravagance.
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Peace, which costs nothing, is attended with infinitely more advantage than any victory with all its expence.
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