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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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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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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.
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Truth never envelops itself in mystery, and the mystery in which it is at any time enveloped is the work of its antagonist, and never of itself.
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Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance.
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Death is not the monarch for the dead, but of the dying. The moment he obtains a conquest he loses a subject.
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The aristocracy are not the farmers who work the land, and raise the produce, but are the mere consumers of the rent and when compared with the active world, are the drones, a seraglio of males, who neither collect the honey nor form the hive, but exist only for lazy enjoyment.
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For the fate of Charles the first, hath only made kings more subtle — not more just.
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Is it more probable that nature should go out of her course, or that a man should tell a lie? We have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course but we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told in the same time.
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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.
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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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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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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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He who is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death.
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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 the madness of folly, to expect mercy from those who have refused to do justice and even mercy, where conquest is the object, is only a trick of war the cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violence of the wolf.
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Mystery is the antagonist of truth. It is a fog of human invention, that obscures truth, and represents it in distortion.
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Let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarcy, that in America the law is King. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King and there ought to be no other.
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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.
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The moral duty of man consists of imitatingthe moral goodness and beneficence of God,manifested in the creation, toward all His creatures.
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It can only be by blinding the understanding of man, and making him believe that government is some wonderful mysterious thing, that excessive revenues are obtained. Monarchy is well calculated to ensure this end. It is the popery of government a thing kept up to amuse the ignorant, and quiet them into taxes.
Thomas Paine