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A nation under a well regulated government, should permit none to remain uninstructed. It is monarchical and aristocratical government only that requires ignorance for its support.

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
Ignorance
Nation
Uninstructed
Education
Monarchical
Support
Regulated
Nations
Permit
Government
Requires
Wells
Remain
Well
None

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I disbelieve all holy men and holy books.
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It is from our enemies that we often gain excellent maxims, and are frequently surprised into reason by their mistakes.
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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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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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Now, which am I to believe, a book that any impostor might make and call the Word of God, or the creation itself which none but an Almighty Power could make? For the Bible says one thing and the creation says the contrary. The Bible represents God with all the passions of a mortal, and the creation proclaims him with all the attributes of a God.
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The stupid texts of the Bible - from which, be the talents of the preacher what they may, only stupid sermons can be preached.
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I call not upon a few, but upon all: not on this state or that state, but on every state up and help us lay your shoulders to the wheel better have too much force than too little, when so great an object is at stake.
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Europe, and not England, is the parent country of America. This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe.
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Government has no right to make itself a party in any debates respecting the principles or mode of forming or of changing, constitutions. It is not for the benefit of those who exercise the powers of government, that constitutions, and the governments issuing from them, are established.
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It is an affront to treat falsehood with complaisance.
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Yet this is trash that the Church imposes upon the world as the Word of God this is the collection of lies and contradictions called the Holy Bible! This is the rubbish called Revealed Religion!
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He who takes nature for his guide, is not easily beaten out of his argument
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My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.
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No man is prejudiced in favor of a thing, knowing it to be wrong. He is attached to it on the belief of its being right and when he sees it is not so, the prejudice will be gone.
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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.
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Reason obeys itself and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.
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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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The Bill of Rights should contain the general principles of natural and civil liberty. It should be to a community what the eternal laws and obligations of morality are to the conscience. It should be unalterable by any human power.
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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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What at first was plunder assumed the softer name of revenue.
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