Quote

When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to [profess] things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.

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
Crime
Corrupted
Doe
Commission
Every
Chastity
Mind
Citizenship
Believe
Hypocrisy
Things
Honesty
Men
Integrity
Prostituted
Prepared
Profess

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The graceful pride of truth knows no extremes, and preserves, in every latitude of life, the right-angled character of man.
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Not a place upon earth might be so happy as America. Her situation is remote from all the wrangling world, and she has nothing to do but to trade with them.
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Our greatest enemies, the ones we must fight most often, are within.
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It is not the nature of avarice to be satisfied with anything but money. Every passion that acts upon mankind has a peculiar mode of operation. Many of them are temporary and fluctuating they admit of cessation and variety. But avarice is a fixed, uniform passion.
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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.
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Better fare hard with good men than feast it with bad.
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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.
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Each government accuses the other of perfidy, intrigue and ambition, as a means of heating the imagination of their respective nations, and incensing them to hostilities. Man is not the enemy of man, but through the medium of a false system of government.
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I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.
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Death is not the monarch for the dead, but of the dying. The moment he obtains a conquest he loses a subject.
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One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests.
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Every proprietor owes to the community a ground-rent for the land which he holds.
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Titles are but nicknames, and every nickname is a title. The thing is perfectly harmless in itself, but it marks a sort of foppery in the human character, which degrades it.
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The countries the most famous and the most respected of antiquity are those which distinguished themselves by promoting and patronizing science, and on the contrary those which neglected or discouraged it are universally denominated rude and barbarous.
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That there are men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the quarrels of Nations is as shocking as it is true.
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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.
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Politics and self-interest have been so uniformly connected, that the world, from being so often deceived, has a right to be suspicious of public characters.
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Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise.
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The Vatican is a dagger in the heart of Italy.
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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.
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