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Taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes.

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
Raised
Taxes
War
Wars
Carry

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It is from the power of taxation being in the hands of those who can throw so great a part of it from their own shoulders, that it has raged without a check.
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From whence, then, could arise the solitary and strange conceit that the Almighty, who had millions of worlds equally dependant on His protection, should quit the care of all the rest, and come to die in our world, because, they say, one man and one woman had eaten an apple?
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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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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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It may perhaps be said that it signifies nothing to a man what is done to him after he is dead but it signifies much to the living it either tortures their feelings or hardens their hearts.
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Lay then the axe to the root, and teach governments humanity. It is their sanguinary punishments which corrupt mankind.
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I do not believe in the creed professed by any church that I know of. Each of these churches accuse the other of unbelief and for my part, I disbelieve them all.
Thomas Paine
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Natural rights are those which always appertain to man in right of his existence. Of this kind are all the intellectual rights, or rights of the mind, and also all those rights of acting as an individual for his own comfort and happiness, which are not injurious to the rights of others.
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I fear not, I see not reason for fear. In the end we will be the victors. For though at times the flame of liberty may cease to shine, the ember will never expire.
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But where, says some, is the King of America? I'll tell you. Friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Britain.
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And as a man, who is attached to a prostitute, is unfitted to choose or judge of a wife, so any prepossession in favour of a rotten constitution of government will disable us from discerning a good one.
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Titles do not count with posterity.
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Public credit is suspicion asleep.
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When it becomes necessary to do a thing, the whole heart and soul should go into the measure, or not attempt it.
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It is painful to behold a man employing his talents to corrupt himself.
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Time makes more converts than reason.
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Not all the treasures of the world, so far as I believe, could have induced me to support an offensive war, for I think it murder but if a thief breaks into my house, burns and destroys my property, and kills or threatens to kill me, or those that are in it, and to bind me in all cases whatsoever to his absolute will, am I to suffer it?
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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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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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Now is the seedtime of continental union, faith and honor. The least fracture now, will be like a name engraved with the point of a pin on the tender rind of a young oak the wound would enlarge with the tree, and posterity read in it full grown characters.
Thomas Paine