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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.

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
Thoughts
Wise
Individual
Collected
Form
Frequently
Able
Improve
Matter
Useful
Would
Individuals
Men
Materials

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As priestcraft was always the enemy of knowledge, because priestcraft supports itself by keeping people in delusion and ignorance, it was consistent with its policy to make the acquisition of knowledge a real sin.
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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.
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It is important that we should never lose sight of this distinction. We must not confuse the peoples with their governments.
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The idea of hereditary legislators is as inconsistent as that of hereditary judges, or hereditary juries and as absurd as an hereditary mathematician, or an hereditary wise man and as ridiculous as an hereditary poet-laureat.
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Priests and conjurors are of the same trade.
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There is something absurd in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island.
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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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Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifiying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity.
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To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.
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It is an affront to treat falsehood with complaisance.
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Action and care will in time wear down the strongest frame, but guilt and melancholy are poisons of quick dispatch.
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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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What at first was plunder assumed the softer name of revenue.
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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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To take away (voting) is to reduce a man to slavery.
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In the early ages of the world, according to the scripture chronology, there were no kings the consequence of which was there were no wars it is the pride of kings which throws mankind into confusion.
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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.
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We have every opportunity and every encouragement before us, to form the noblest truest constitution on the face of the earth. We have it in our power to begin the world over again.
Thomas Paine
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Our greatest enemies, the ones we must fight most often, are within.
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Civil rights are those which appertain to man in right of his being a member of society. Every civil right has for its foundation some natural right pre-existing in the individual, but to the enjoyment of which his individual power is not, in all cases, sufficiently competent. Of this kind are all those which relate to security and protection.
Thomas Paine