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Titles are like a magicians wand which circumscribe human facility and prevent us from living the lives of man.

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
Lives
Magicians
Living
Wand
Human
Wands
Humans
Facility
Men
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Titles
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More quotes by Thomas Paine

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EVERY national church or religion has established itself by pretending some special mission from God, communicated to certain individuals. The Jews have their Moses the Christians their Jesus Christ, their apostles and saints and the Turks their Mahomet as if the way to God was not open to every man alike.
Thomas Paine
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The story of the whale swallowing Jonah, though a whale is large enough to do it, borders greatly on the marvelous but it would have approached nearer to the idea of a miracle if Jonah had swallowed the whale.
Thomas Paine
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But such is the irresistable nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants is the liberty of appearing.
Thomas Paine
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What is it the Bible teaches us? - raping, cruelty, and murder. What is it the New Testament teaches us? - to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married, and the belief of this debauchery is called faith.
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.
Thomas Paine
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We ought therefore to suspect that a great mass of information respecting the Bible, and the introduction of it into the world, has been suppressed by the united tyranny of Church and State, for the purpose of keeping people in ignorance, and which ought to be known.
Thomas Paine
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How necessary it is at all times to watch against the attempted encroachment of power, and to prevent its running to excess.
Thomas Paine
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...the true greatness of a nation is founded on principles of humanity.
Thomas Paine
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Time makes more converts than reason.
Thomas Paine
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I detest the Bible as I detest everything that is cruel.
Thomas Paine
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Some people can be reasoned into sense, and others must be shocked into it.
Thomas Paine
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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.
Thomas Paine
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I know not whether taxes are raised to fight wars, or wars are fought in order to raise taxes.
Thomas Paine
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Man is not the enemy of man, but through the medium of a false system of Government. Instead, therefore, of exclaiming against the ambition of kings, the exclamation should be directed against the principle of such governments and instead of seeking to reform the individual, the wisdom of a nation should apply itself to reform the system.
Thomas Paine
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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.
Thomas Paine
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There is a happiness in Deism, when rightly understood, that is not to be found inany other system of religion. All other systems have something in them that either shock our reason, or are repugnant to it, and man, if he thinks at all, must stifle his reason in order to force himself to believe them.
Thomas Paine
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Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself.
Thomas Paine
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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.
Thomas Paine
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What is called a republic, is not any particular form of government ... it is naturally opposed to the word monarchy, which means arbitrary power.
Thomas Paine
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It is from our enemies that we often gain excellent maxims, and are frequently surprised into reason by their mistakes.
Thomas Paine