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It is from our enemies that we often gain excellent maxims, and are frequently surprised into reason by their mistakes.

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
Gain
Gains
Mistakes
Mistake
Maxims
Enemy
Frequently
Often
Surprised
Reason
Excellent
Enemies

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It will be proper to take a review of the several sources from which governments have arisen, and on which they have been founded.
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Character is much easier kept than recovered.
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Man did not enter society to be worse off, or to have fewer rights, but rather to have those rights better secured
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Some people can be reasoned into sense, and others must be shocked into it.
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EVERY national church or religion has established itself by pretending some special mission from God, communicated to certain individuals. The Jews have their Moses the Christians their Jesus Christ, their apostles and saints and the Turks their Mahomet as if the way to God was not open to every man alike.
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The reformation was preceded by the discovery of America, as if the Almighty graciously meant to open a sanctuary to the persecuted in future years, when home should afford neither friendship nor safety.
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Where there are no distinctions there can be no superiority perfect equality affords no temptation.
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I believe in one God, and no more and I hope for happiness beyond this life.
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Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.
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It is a general idea, that when taxes are once laid on, they are never taken off.
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It is with a pious fraud as with a bad action it begets a calamitous necessity of going on.
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My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.
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For the fate of Charles the first, hath only made kings more subtle — not more just.
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I call not upon a few, but upon all: not on this state or that state, but on every state up and help us lay your shoulders to the wheel better have too much force than too little, when so great an object is at stake.
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It is from the power of taxation being in the hands of those who can throw so great a part of it from their own shoulders, that it has raged without a check.
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Christianity is the strangest religion ever set up, for it committed a murder upon Jesus in order to redeem mankind from the sin of eating an apple.
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The story of the whale swallowing Jonah, though a whale is large enough to do it, borders greatly on the marvelous but it would have approached nearer to the idea of a miracle if Jonah had swallowed the whale.
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A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.
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Ah, reader, put thy trust in thy creator, and thou wilt be safe but if thou trustest to the book called the scriptures thou trustest to the rotten staff of fable and falsehood.
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Priests and conjurors are of the same trade.
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