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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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EVERY national church or religion has established itself by pretending some special mission from God, communicated to certain individuals. The Jews have their Moses the Christians their Jesus Christ, their apostles and saints and the Turks their Mahomet as if the way to God was not open to every man alike.
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There is something in corruption which, like a jaundiced eye, transfers the color of itself to the object it looks upon, and sees everything stained and impure.
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The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason.
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Those who expect to reap the blessing of freedom must undertake to support it.
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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 body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.
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Nothing, they say is more certain than death, and nothing more uncertain than the time of dying
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The greatest remedy for anger is delay.
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Thus commerce, though in itself a moral nullity, has had a considerable influence in tempering the human mind....he trades with the same countries ...(that he) would have gone to war with.
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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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Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise.
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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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To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.
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I know not whether taxes are raised to fight wars, or wars are fought in order to raise taxes.
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...the true greatness of a nation is founded on principles of humanity.
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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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There is a happiness in Deism, when rightly understood, that is not to be found inany other system of religion. All other systems have something in them that either shock our reason, or are repugnant to it, and man, if he thinks at all, must stifle his reason in order to force himself to believe them.
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The countries the most famous and the most respected of antiquity are those which distinguished themselves by promoting and patronizing science, and on the contrary those which neglected or discouraged it are universally denominated rude and barbarous.
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Public credit is suspicion asleep.
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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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