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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.

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
Mean
Service
Sensible
Atheism
Folly
Mankind
Convince
Mistake
Prejudice
Means
Determination
Right
Faults
Follies
Must
Putting
Bearing
Real
Mistakes
Prejudices

More quotes by Thomas Paine

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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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The representative system of government is calculated to produce the wisest laws, by collecting wisdom where it can be found.
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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.
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Government without a constitution, is a power without a right.
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The idea of hereditary legislators is as inconsistent as that of hereditary judges, or hereditary juries and as absurd as an hereditary mathematician, or an hereditary wise man and as ridiculous as an hereditary poet-laureat.
Thomas Paine
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It may perhaps be said that it signifies nothing to a man what is done to him after he is dead but it signifies much to the living it either tortures their feelings or hardens their hearts.
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Truth never envelops itself in mystery, and the mystery in which it is at any time enveloped is the work of its antagonist, and never of itself.
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If any generation of men ever possessed the right of dictating the mode by which the world should be governed for ever, it was the first generation that existed and if that generation did it not, no succeeding generation can show any authority for doing it, nor can set any up.
Thomas Paine
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All the religions known in the world are founded, so far as they relate to man or the unity of man, as being all of one degree. Whether in heaven or in hell, or in whatever state man may be supposed to exist hereafter, the good and the bad are the only distinctions.
Thomas Paine
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The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related, that it is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again.
Thomas Paine
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Immediate necessity makes many things convenient, which if continued would grow into oppressions.
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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Death is not the monarch for the dead, but of the dying. The moment he obtains a conquest he loses a subject.
Thomas Paine
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That there are men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the quarrels of Nations is as shocking as it is true.
Thomas Paine
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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
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I die content, I die for the liberty of my country.
Thomas Paine
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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
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The more acquisitions the government makes abroad, the more taxes the people have to pay at home.
Thomas Paine
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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
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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