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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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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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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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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.
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... a thirst for power is the natural disease of monarchy.
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Take away from Genesis the belief that Moses was the author, on which only the strange believe that it is the word of God has stood, and there remains nothing of Genesis but an anonymous book of stories, fables, and traditionary or invented absurdities, or of downright lies.
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Government without a constitution, is a power without a right.
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Suspicion is the companion of mean souls, and the bane of all good society.
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Now is the seedtime of continental union, faith and honor. The least fracture now, will be like a name engraved with the point of a pin on the tender rind of a young oak the wound would enlarge with the tree, and posterity read in it full grown characters.
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To possess ourselves of a clear idea of what government is, or ought to be, we must trace it to its origin.
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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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Public credit is suspicion asleep.
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The countries the most famous and the most respected of antiquity are those which distinguished themselves by promoting and patronizing science, and on the contrary those which neglected or discouraged it are universally denominated rude and barbarous.
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It is only by the exercise of reason that man can discover God.
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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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Politics and self-interest have been so uniformly connected, that the world, from being so often deceived, has a right to be suspicious of public characters.
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Government has no right to make itself a party in any debates respecting the principles or mode of forming or of changing, constitutions. It is not for the benefit of those who exercise the powers of government, that constitutions, and the governments issuing from them, are established.
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But if objects for gratitude and admiration are our desire, do they not present themselves every hour to our eyes?
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[A]ll churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim, are simply human inventions. They use fear to enslave us. They are a monopoly for power and profit.
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If there was ever a just war since the world began, it is this in which America is now engaged.
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The graceful pride of truth knows no extremes, and preserves, in every latitude of life, the right-angled character of man.
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