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And as a man, who is attached to a prostitute, is unfitted to choose or judge of a wife, so any prepossession in favour of a rotten constitution of government will disable us from discerning a good one.

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
Constitution
Disable
Choose
Prostitute
Wife
Discerning
Government
Favour
Good
Rotten
Men
Attached
Judge
Judging

More quotes by Thomas Paine

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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.
Thomas Paine
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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.
Thomas Paine
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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.
Thomas Paine
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To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.
Thomas Paine
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The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.
Thomas Paine
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It has been the scheme of the Christian Church, and of all the other invented systems of religion, to hold man in ignorance of the Creator, as it is of Government to hold man in ignorance of his rights. The systems of the one are as false as those of the other, and are calculated for mutual support.
Thomas Paine
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Prejudice will fall in a combat with interest.
Thomas Paine
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The greatest remedy for anger is delay.
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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If there was ever a just war since the world began, it is this in which America is now engaged.
Thomas Paine
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I disbelieve all holy men and holy books.
Thomas Paine
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What is it the Bible teaches us? - raping, cruelty, and murder. What is it the New Testament teaches us? - to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married, and the belief of this debauchery is called faith.
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 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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The reformation was preceded by the discovery of America, as if the Almighty graciously meant to open a sanctuary to the persecuted in future years, when home should afford neither friendship nor safety.
Thomas Paine
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Liberty cannot be purchased by a wish.
Thomas Paine
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The greatest characters the world has known, have rose on the democratic floor. Aristocracy has not been able to keep a proportionate pace with democracy.
Thomas Paine
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Accustom a people to believe that priests, or any other class of men can forgive sins and you will have sins in abundance.
Thomas Paine
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I believe in one God, and no more and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe in the equality of humans and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow creatures happy.
Thomas Paine
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When authors and critics talk of the sublime, they see not how nearly it borders on the ridiculous.
Thomas Paine