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A little matter will move a party, but it must be something great that moves a nation.

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
Littles
Opinion
Ideas
Politics
Little
Nations
Moves
Matter
Party
Unity
Must
Purpose
Greatness
Great
Common
Nation
Something
Moving
Move
Political
Movement

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Therefore we say that a lying Spirit has been in the mouth of the writers of the books of the Bible.
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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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The strength and power of despotism consists wholly in the fear of resistance.
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It is the madness of folly, to expect mercy from those who have refused to do justice and even mercy, where conquest is the object, is only a trick of war the cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violence of the wolf.
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We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in.
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The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.
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Government is a necessary evil
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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.
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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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Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess.
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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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Man did not make the earth, and though he had a natural right to occupy it, he had no right to locate as his property in perpetuity, any part of it.
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These are the times that try men's souls.
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Could the straggling thoughts of individuals be collected, they would frequently form materials for wise and able men to improve into useful matter.
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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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Taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes.
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The representative system of government is calculated to produce the wisest laws, by collecting wisdom where it can be found.
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I draw my idea of the form of government from a principle in nature, which no art can overturn, viz. that the more simple any thing is, the less liable it is to be disordered and the easier repaired when disordered.
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There is something in meanness which excites a species of resentment that never subsides, and something in cruelty which stirs up the heart to the highest agony of human hatred.
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Men did not make the earth... It is the value of the improvements only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property. ... Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds.
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