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Religion is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize humankind and, for my part, I sincerely detest it as I detest everything that is cruel.

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
Sincerely
Humankind
Served
Cruel
Religion
Brutalize
History
Detest
Part
Wickedness
Everything
Corrupt

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Every person of learning is finally his own teacher.
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Ah, reader, put thy trust in thy creator, and thou wilt be safe but if thou trustest to the book called the scriptures thou trustest to the rotten staff of fable and falsehood.
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...the individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.
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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 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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Wrong cannot have a legal descendant.
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Taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes.
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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 greatest characters the world has known, have rose on the democratic floor. Aristocracy has not been able to keep a proportionate pace with democracy.
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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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It may perhaps be said that it signifies nothing to a man what is done to him after he is dead but it signifies much to the living it either tortures their feelings or hardens their hearts.
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It is an affront to treat falsehood with complaisance.
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Oppression is often the consequence, but seldom or never the means of riches and tho' avarice will preserve a man from being necessitously poor, it generally makes him too timorous to be wealthy.
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A nation under a well regulated government, should permit none to remain uninstructed. It is monarchical and aristocratical government only that requires ignorance for its support.
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Better fare hard with good men than feast it with bad.
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Accustom a people to believe that priests, or any other class of men can forgive sins and you will have sins in abundance.
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The instant formal government is abolished, society begins to act. A general association takes place, and common interest produces common security.
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It is the fable of Jesus Christ, as told in the New Testament, and the wild and visionary doctrine raised thereon, against which I contend. The story, taking it as it is told, is blasphemously obscene.
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Every proprietor owes to the community a ground-rent for the land which he holds.
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A share in two revolutions is living to some purpose.
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