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Civilization, or that which is so called, has operated two ways to make one part of society more affluent and the other part more wretched than would have been the lot of either in a natural state.

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
States
Ways
Way
Either
Make
Called
Would
State
Society
Operated
Natural
Affluent
Two
Wretched
Part
Civilization

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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!
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When my country, into which I had just set my foot, was set on fire about my ears, it was time to stir. It was time for every man to stir.
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THE WORD OF GOD IS THE CREATION WE BEHOLD: And it is in this word, which no human invention can counterfeit or alter, that God speaketh universally to man.
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We hold the moral obligation of providing for old age, helpless infancy, and poverty is far superior to that of supplying the invented wants of courtly extravagance.
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There is a happiness in Deism, when rightly understood, that is not to be found inany other system of religion. All other systems have something in them that either shock our reason, or are repugnant to it, and man, if he thinks at all, must stifle his reason in order to force himself to believe them.
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Prejudice will fall in a combat with interest.
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Accustom a people to believe that priests, or any other class of men can forgive sins and you will have sins in abundance.
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Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make principles he can only discover them.
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Character is much easier kept than recovered.
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Each government accuses the other of perfidy, intrigue and ambition, as a means of heating the imagination of their respective nations, and incensing them to hostilities. Man is not the enemy of man, but through the medium of a false system of government.
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We ought therefore to suspect that a great mass of information respecting the Bible, and the introduction of it into the world, has been suppressed by the united tyranny of Church and State, for the purpose of keeping people in ignorance, and which ought to be known.
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Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself.
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Where there are no distinctions there can be no superiority perfect equality affords no temptation.
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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
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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.
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Human nature is not of itself vicious.
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The essential psychological requirement of a free society is the willingness on the part of the individual to accept responsibility for his life. - Edith Packer When the government fears the people, it is liberty. When the people fear the government, it is tyranny.
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Nothing, they say is more certain than death, and nothing more uncertain than the time of dying
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The intimacy which is contracted in infancy, and friendship which is formed in misfortune, are, of all others, the most lasting and unalterable.
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...It would be more consistent that we call [the Bible] the work of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.
Thomas Paine