Quote

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

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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
Well
Taxes
Excessive
Thing
Quiet
Monarchy
Believe
Wonderful
Taxation
Men
Understanding
Revenue
Blinding
Making
Ensure
Revenues
Ends
Mysterious
Amuse
Government
Ignorant
Calculated
Wells
Kept
Obtained

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Mingling religion with politics may be disavowed and reprobated by every inhabitant of America.
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Government is not a trade which any man or body of men has a right to set up and exercise for his own emolument, but is altogether a trust, in right of those by whom that trust is delegated, and by whom it is always resumable. It has of itself no rights they are altogether duties.
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What is it the Bible teaches us? - raping, cruelty, and murder. What is it the New Testament teaches us? - to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married, and the belief of this debauchery is called faith.
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Better fare hard with good men than feast it with bad.
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The Christian system of religion is an outrage on common sense.
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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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How necessary it is at all times to watch against the attempted encroachment of power, and to prevent its running to excess.
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...the true greatness of a nation is founded on principles of humanity.
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The more we bestow the richer we become.
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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 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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Priests and conjurors are of the same trade.
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The greatest remedy for anger is delay.
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I am sensible that he who means to do mankind a real service must set down with the determination of putting up, and bearing with all their faults, follies, prejudices and mistakes until he can convince them that he is right.
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Peace, which costs nothing, is attended with infinitely more advantage than any victory with all its expence.
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