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Wrong cannot have a legal descendant.
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
Descendants
Legal
Wrong
Cannot
Descendant
More quotes by Thomas Paine
The Bill of Rights should contain the general principles of natural and civil liberty. It should be to a community what the eternal laws and obligations of morality are to the conscience. It should be unalterable by any human power.
Thomas Paine
Lay then the axe to the root, and teach governments humanity. It is their sanguinary punishments which corrupt mankind.
Thomas Paine
Moderation in temper is always a virtue but moderation in principle is always a vice.
Thomas Paine
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
Action and care will in time wear down the strongest frame, but guilt and melancholy are poisons of quick dispatch.
Thomas Paine
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.
Thomas Paine
It is not the nature of avarice to be satisfied with anything but money. Every passion that acts upon mankind has a peculiar mode of operation. Many of them are temporary and fluctuating they admit of cessation and variety. But avarice is a fixed, uniform passion.
Thomas Paine
A man may write himself out of reputation when nobody else can do it.
Thomas Paine
A government of our own is our natural right and when a man seriously reflects on the precariousness of human affairs, he will become convinced, that it is infinitely wiser and safer, to form a constitution of our own in a cool deliberate manner, while we have it in our power, than to trust such an interesting event to time and chance.
Thomas Paine
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
The declaration which says that God visits the sins of the fathers upon the children is contrary to every principle of moral justice.
Thomas Paine
I know not whether taxes are raised to fight wars, or wars are fought in order to raise taxes.
Thomas Paine
Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man.
Thomas Paine
It is painful to behold a man employing his talents to corrupt himself.
Thomas Paine
There is something in corruption which, like a jaundiced eye, transfers the color of itself to the object it looks upon, and sees everything stained and impure.
Thomas Paine
To say that any people are not fit for freedom, is to make poverty their choice, and to say they had rather be loaded with taxes than not.
Thomas Paine
If the present generation, or any other, are disposed to be slaves, it does not lessen the right of the succeeding generation to be free: wrongs cannot have a legal descent.
Thomas Paine
Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.
Thomas Paine
For the fate of Charles the first, hath only made kings more subtle — not more just.
Thomas Paine
A government on the principles on which constitutional governments arising out of society are established, cannot have the right of altering itself. If it had, it would be arbitrary. It might make itself what it pleased and wherever such a right is set up, it shows there is no constitution.
Thomas Paine