Quote

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.

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
Less
Overturn
Idea
Liable
Art
Draw
Nature
Principle
Form
Draws
Government
Easier
Ideas
Principles
Disordered
Thing
Simple
Repaired

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Immediate necessity makes many things convenient, which if continued would grow into oppressions.
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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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Every person of learning is finally his own teacher.
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My country is wherever liberty lives.
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Not all the treasures of the world, so far as I believe, could have induced me to support an offensive war, for I think it murder but if a thief breaks into my house, burns and destroys my property, and kills or threatens to kill me, or those that are in it, and to bind me in all cases whatsoever to his absolute will, am I to suffer it?
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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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Titles do not count with posterity.
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To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.
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Society is produced by our wants and government by our wickedness.
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Take away from Genesis the belief that Moses was the author, on which only the strange believe that it is the word of God has stood, and there remains nothing of Genesis but an anonymous book of stories, fables, and traditionary or invented absurdities, or of downright lies.
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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 right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery, for slavery consists in being subject to the will of another, and he that has not a vote in the election of representatives is in this case.
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Some people can be reasoned into sense, and others must be shocked into it.
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The mind, in discovering truths, acts in the same manner as it acts through the eye in discovering objects when once any object has been seen, it is impossible to put the mind back to the same condition it was in before it saw it.
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It is only by the exercise of reason that man can discover God.
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Those who expect to reap the blessing of freedom must undertake to support it.
Thomas Paine
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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 right of voting for representatives , is the primary right by which other rights are protected.
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It is painful to behold a man employing his talents to corrupt himself.
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Wisdom is not the purchase of a day, and it is no wonder that we should err at the first setting off.
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