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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.

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
Class
Religion
Accustom
Believe
Priests
Men
Sins
People
Abundance
Forgive
Forgiving
Sin

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From the errors of other nations, let us learn wisdom.
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Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all cases as the ages and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies.
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We have every opportunity and every encouragement before us, to form the noblest truest constitution on the face of the earth. We have it in our power to begin the world over again.
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Natural rights are those which always appertain to man in right of his existence. Of this kind are all the intellectual rights, or rights of the mind, and also all those rights of acting as an individual for his own comfort and happiness, which are not injurious to the rights of others.
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Time makes more converts than reason.
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The Vatican is a dagger in the heart of Italy.
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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.
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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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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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Lay then the axe to the root, and teach governments humanity. It is their sanguinary punishments which corrupt mankind.
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Prejudice will fall in a combat with interest.
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All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
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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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And to read the Bible without horror, we must undo everything that is tender, sympathizing and benevolent in the heart of man.
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Politics and self-interest have been so uniformly connected, that the world, from being so often deceived, has a right to be suspicious of public characters.
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Yet this is trash that the Church imposes upon the world as the Word of God this is the collection of lies and contradictions called the Holy Bible! This is the rubbish called Revealed Religion!
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The balance of power is the scale of peace. The same balance would be preserved were all the world not destitute of arms, for all would be alike but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside ... Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them ... the weak will become prey to the strong.
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THE WORD OF GOD IS THE CREATION WE BEHOLD: And it is in this word, which no human invention can counterfeit or alter, that God speaketh universally to man.
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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.
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No man is prejudiced in favor of a thing, knowing it to be wrong. He is attached to it on the belief of its being right and when he sees it is not so, the prejudice will be gone.
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