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There is something absurd in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island.

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
Continents
Island
Islands
Absurd
Something
Supposing
Perpetually
Continent
Governed

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All the religions known in the world are founded, so far as they relate to man or the unity of man, as being all of one degree. Whether in heaven or in hell, or in whatever state man may be supposed to exist hereafter, the good and the bad are the only distinctions.
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From the east to the west blow the trumpet to arms! Through the land let the sound of it flee Let the far and the near all unite, with a cheer, In defense of our Liberty Tree.
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When extraordinary power and extraordinary pay are allotted to any individual in a government, he becomes the center, round which every kind of corruption generates and forms.
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The American constitutions were to liberty, what a grammar is to language: they define its parts of speech, and practically construct them into syntax
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How necessary it is at all times to watch against the attempted encroachment of power, and to prevent its running to excess.
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Government is not a trade which any man or body of men has a right to set up and exercise for his own emolument, but is altogether a trust, in right of those by whom that trust is delegated, and by whom it is always resumable. It has of itself no rights they are altogether duties.
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The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason.
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It is with a pious fraud as with a bad action it begets a calamitous necessity of going on.
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Every person of learning is finally his own teacher.
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If those to whom power is delegated do well, they will be respected if not, they will be despised.
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Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all cases as the ages and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies.
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That there are men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the quarrels of Nations is as shocking as it is true.
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What at first was plunder assumed the softer name of revenue.
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Immediate necessity makes many things convenient, which if continued would grow into oppressions.
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Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst.
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For all men being originally equals, no one by birth could have the right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others forever, and tho' himself might deserve some decent degree of honours of his cotemporaries, yet his descendants might be far too unworthy to inherit them.
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Government is a necessary evil
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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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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 true greatness of a nation is founded on principles of humanity.
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