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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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Prevent
Titles
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More quotes by Thomas Paine

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For all men being originally equals, no one by birth could have the right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others forever, and tho' himself might deserve some decent degree of honours of his cotemporaries, yet his descendants might be far too unworthy to inherit them.
Thomas Paine
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Arms, like laws, discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe and preserve order.
Thomas Paine
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To take away (voting) is to reduce a man to slavery.
Thomas Paine
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Nothing, they say is more certain than death, and nothing more uncertain than the time of dying
Thomas Paine
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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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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.
Thomas Paine
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... in free countries the law ought to be King and there ought to be no other.
Thomas Paine
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The Book of Job and the 19th Psalm, which even the Church admits to be more ancient than the chronological order in which they stand in the book called the Bible, are theological orations conformable to the original system of theology.
Thomas Paine
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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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The Vatican is a dagger in the heart of Italy.
Thomas Paine
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The burden of the national debt consists not in its being so many millions, or so many hundred millions, but in the quantity of taxes collected every year to pay the interest. If this quantity continue the same, the burden of the national debt is the same to all intents and purposes, be the capital more or less.
Thomas Paine
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Public credit is suspicion asleep.
Thomas Paine
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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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The greatest remedy for anger is delay.
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.
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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Religion is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize humankind and, for my part, I sincerely detest it as I detest everything that is cruel.
Thomas Paine
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Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.
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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Suspicion is the companion of mean souls, and the bane of all good society.
Thomas Paine