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Wisdom is not the purchase of a day, and it is no wonder that we should err at the first setting off.

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
Setting
Wonder
Wisdom
Firsts
First
Purchase
Settings

More quotes by Thomas Paine

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Christianity is the strangest religion ever set up, for it committed a murder upon Jesus in order to redeem mankind from the sin of eating an apple.
Thomas Paine
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Men did not make the earth... It is the value of the improvements only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property. ... Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds.
Thomas Paine
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The aristocracy are not the farmers who work the land, and raise the produce, but are the mere consumers of the rent and when compared with the active world, are the drones, a seraglio of males, who neither collect the honey nor form the hive, but exist only for lazy enjoyment.
Thomas Paine
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A man may write himself out of reputation when nobody else can do it.
Thomas Paine
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Small islands, not capable of protecting themselves, are the proper objects for kingdoms to take under their care but there is something absurd, in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island.
Thomas Paine
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Tears may soothe the wounds they cannot heal.
Thomas Paine
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When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to [profess] things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.
Thomas Paine
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And as to you, Sir, treacherous in private friendship and a hypocrite in public life, the world will be puzzled to decide whether you are an apostate or an impostor whether you have abandoned good principles, or whether you ever had any.
Thomas Paine
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The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum.
Thomas Paine
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To believe that God created a plurality of worlds, at least as numerous as what we call stars, renders the Christian faith at once little and ridiculous and scatters it in the mind like feathers in the air.
Thomas Paine
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To take away (voting) is to reduce a man to slavery.
Thomas Paine
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Lay then the axe to the root, and teach governments humanity. It is their sanguinary punishments which corrupt mankind.
Thomas Paine
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We must be compelled to hold this doctrine to be false, and the old and new law called the Old and New Testament, to be impositions, fables and forgeries.
Thomas Paine
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It is from the power of taxation being in the hands of those who can throw so great a part of it from their own shoulders, that it has raged without a check.
Thomas Paine
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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.
Thomas Paine
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I call not upon a few, but upon all: not on this state or that state, but on every state up and help us lay your shoulders to the wheel better have too much force than too little, when so great an object is at stake.
Thomas Paine
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Taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes.
Thomas Paine
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I believe in one God, and no more and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe in the equality of humans and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow creatures happy.
Thomas Paine
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Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise.
Thomas Paine
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When authors and critics talk of the sublime, they see not how nearly it borders on the ridiculous.
Thomas Paine