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Where knowledge is a duty, ignorance is a crime.
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
Duty
Knowledge
Ignorance
Crime
More quotes by Thomas Paine
...the Bible is such a book of lies and contradictions there is no knowing which part to believe or whether any.
Thomas Paine
...Thomas did not believe the resurrection [John 20:25], and, as they say, would not believe without having ocular and manual demonstration himself. So neither will I, and the reason is equally as good for me, and for every other person, as for Thomas.
Thomas Paine
He, who survives his reputation, lives out of despite himself, like a man listening to his own reproach.
Thomas Paine
From whence, then, could arise the solitary and strange conceit that the Almighty, who had millions of worlds equally dependant on His protection, should quit the care of all the rest, and come to die in our world, because, they say, one man and one woman had eaten an apple?
Thomas Paine
To say that any people are not fit for freedom, is to make poverty their choice, and to say they had rather be loaded with taxes than not.
Thomas Paine
When authors and critics talk of the sublime, they see not how nearly it borders on the ridiculous.
Thomas Paine
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.
Thomas Paine
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
It is a general idea, that when taxes are once laid on, they are never taken off.
Thomas Paine
Civil rights are those which appertain to man in right of his being a member of society. Every civil right has for its foundation some natural right pre-existing in the individual, but to the enjoyment of which his individual power is not, in all cases, sufficiently competent. Of this kind are all those which relate to security and protection.
Thomas Paine
The artificial noble shrinks into a dwarf before the noble of nature and in the few instances (for there are some in all countries) in whom nature, as by a miracle, has survived in aristocracy, those men despise it.
Thomas Paine
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.
Thomas Paine
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
Reason obeys itself and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.
Thomas Paine
Titles do not count with posterity.
Thomas Paine
Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess.
Thomas Paine
When it becomes necessary to do a thing, the whole heart and soul should go into the measure, or not attempt it.
Thomas Paine
I do not believe in the creed professed by any church that I know of. Each of these churches accuse the other of unbelief and for my part, I disbelieve them all.
Thomas Paine
We repose an unwise confidence in any government, or in any men, when we invest them officially with too much, or an unnecessary quantity of, discretionary power.
Thomas Paine
The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason.
Thomas Paine
