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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

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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
Country
Survived
Men
Despise
Artificial
Dwarf
Instance
Dwarves
Noble
Dwarfs
Countries
Instances
Miracle
Aristocracy
Nature
Shrinks

More quotes by Thomas Paine

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Is it more probable that nature should go out of her course, or that a man should tell a lie? We have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course but we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told in the same time.
Thomas Paine
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It is with a pious fraud as with a bad action it begets a calamitous necessity of going on.
Thomas Paine
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Of all the tyrannies that effect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst every other species of tyranny is limited to the world we live in but this attempts to stride beyond the grave, and seeks to pursue us into eternity.
Thomas Paine
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All men can understand what representation is and that it must necessarily include a variety of knowledge and talents.
Thomas Paine
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Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst.
Thomas Paine
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Let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarcy, that in America the law is King. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King and there ought to be no other.
Thomas Paine
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Some people can be reasoned into sense, and others must be shocked into it.
Thomas Paine
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The instant formal government is abolished, society begins to act. A general association takes place, and common interest produces common security.
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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And as a man, who is attached to a prostitute, is unfitted to choose or judge of a wife, so any prepossession in favour of a rotten constitution of government will disable us from discerning a good one.
Thomas Paine
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The times that tried men's souls are over-and the greatest and completest revolution the world ever knew, gloriously and happily accomplished.
Thomas Paine
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Reason and Ignorance, the opposites of each other, influence the great bulk of mankind. If either of these can be rendered sufficiently extensive in a country, the machinery of Government goes easily on. Reason obeys itself and Ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.
Thomas Paine
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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.
Thomas Paine
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As my object was not myself, I set out with the determination, and happily with the disposition, of not being moved by praise or censure, friendship or calumny, nor of being drawn from my purpose by any personal altercation and the man who cannot do this, is not fit for a public character.
Thomas Paine
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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!
Thomas Paine
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The right of voting for representatives , is the primary right by which other rights are protected.
Thomas Paine
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Titles are but nicknames, and every nickname is a title. The thing is perfectly harmless in itself, but it marks a sort of foppery in the human character, which degrades it.
Thomas Paine
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Common sense will tell us, that the power which hath endeavoured to subdue us, is of all others, the most improper to defend us.
Thomas Paine
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Government without a constitution, is a power without a right.
Thomas Paine
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Our greatest enemies, the ones we must fight most often, are within.
Thomas Paine