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Government is a necessary evil

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
Necessary
Evil
Government

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A government on the principles on which constitutional governments arising out of society are established, cannot have the right of altering itself. If it had, it would be arbitrary. It might make itself what it pleased and wherever such a right is set up, it shows there is no constitution.
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Our greatest enemies, the ones we must fight most often, are within.
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The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason.
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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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The more we bestow the richer we become.
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I call not upon a few, but upon all: not on this state or that state, but on every state up and help us lay your shoulders to the wheel better have too much force than too little, when so great an object is at stake.
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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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A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.
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Now, which am I to believe, a book that any impostor might make and call the Word of God, or the creation itself which none but an Almighty Power could make? For the Bible says one thing and the creation says the contrary. The Bible represents God with all the passions of a mortal, and the creation proclaims him with all the attributes of a God.
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Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make principles he can only discover them.
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My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.
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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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The final event to himself has been, that as he rose like a rocket, he fell like the stick.
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Is it because you are sunk in the cruelty of superstition, or feel no interest in the honor of your Creator, that you listen to the horrid tales of the Bible, or hear them with callous indifference?
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...the Bible is such a book of lies and contradictions there is no knowing which part to believe or whether any.
Thomas Paine
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War ought to be no man's wish.
Thomas Paine
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Character is much easier kept than recovered.
Thomas Paine
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To say that any people are not fit for freedom, is to make poverty their choice, and to say they had rather be loaded with taxes than not.
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What is called a republic, is not any particular form of government ... it is naturally opposed to the word monarchy, which means arbitrary power.
Thomas Paine
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Taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes.
Thomas Paine