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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

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
Language
Practically
America
Grammar
Define
Parts
Constitution
Constitutions
Speech
Syntax
Liberty
Construct
American
Constructs

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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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The United States of America will sound as pompously in the world or in history as The Kingdom of Great Britain.
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Society is produced by our wants and government by our wickedness.
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Titles are but nicknames, and every nickname is a title. The thing is perfectly harmless in itself, but it marks a sort of foppery in the human character, which degrades it.
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Lay then the axe to the root, and teach governments humanity. It is their sanguinary punishments which corrupt mankind.
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For the fate of Charles the first, hath only made kings more subtle — not more just.
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The Christian religion is a parody on the worship of the sun, in which they put a man called Christ in the place of the sun, and pay him the adoration originally payed to the sun.
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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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Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.
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The more acquisitions the government makes abroad, the more taxes the people have to pay at home.
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Youth is the seed time of good habits, as well in nations as in individuals.
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We hold the moral obligation of providing for old age, helpless infancy, and poverty is far superior to that of supplying the invented wants of courtly extravagance.
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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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Every Tory is a coward for servile, slavish, self-interested fear is the foundation of Toryism and a man under such influence, though he may be cruel, never can be brave.
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The declaration which says that God visits the sins of the fathers upon the children is contrary to every principle of moral justice.
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My country is wherever liberty lives.
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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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I do not believe in the creed professed by any church that I know of. Each of these churches accuse the other of unbelief and for my part, I disbelieve them all.
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He, who survives his reputation, lives out of despite himself, like a man listening to his own reproach.
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To possess ourselves of a clear idea of what government is, or ought to be, we must trace it to its origin.
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