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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.

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
Cases
Ages
Age
Graves
Vanity
Tyrannies
Free
Tyranny
Insolent
Must
Ridiculous
Preceded
Every
Generation
Presumption
Generations
Governing
Beyond
Grave

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We have it in our power to begin the world over again.
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He that rebels against reason is a real rebel, but he that in defence of reason rebels against tyranny has a better title to Defender of the Faith, than George the Third.
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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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The creation is the Bible of the Deist. He there reads, in the handwriting of the Creator himself, the certainty of His existence and the immutability of His power, and all other Bibles and Testaments are to him forgeries.
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Let them call me rebel, and welcome, I feel no concern from it.
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Liberty cannot be purchased by a wish.
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When authors and critics talk of the sublime, they see not how nearly it borders on the ridiculous.
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The New Testament rests itself for credulity and testimony on what are called prophecies in the Old Testament, of the person called Jesus Christ and if there are no such things as prophecies of any such person in the Old Testament, the New Testament.
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It is not the nature of avarice to be satisfied with anything but money. Every passion that acts upon mankind has a peculiar mode of operation. Many of them are temporary and fluctuating they admit of cessation and variety. But avarice is a fixed, uniform passion.
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Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.
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The Bible: a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalise mankind.
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It is from our enemies that we often gain excellent maxims, and are frequently surprised into reason by their mistakes.
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The graceful pride of truth knows no extremes, and preserves, in every latitude of life, the right-angled character of man.
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A man may write himself out of reputation when nobody else can do it.
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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.
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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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Better fare hard with good men than feast it with bad.
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No nation ought to be without a debt. A national debt is a national bond and when it bears no interest, is in no case a grievance.
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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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I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.
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