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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.

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
Superiors
Courtly
Obligation
Supplying
Poverty
Extravagance
Hold
Infancy
Wants
Helpless
Justice
Providing
Moral
Invented
Age
Superior

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Thus commerce, though in itself a moral nullity, has had a considerable influence in tempering the human mind....he trades with the same countries ...(that he) would have gone to war with.
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The burden of the national debt consists not in its being so many millions, or so many hundred millions, but in the quantity of taxes collected every year to pay the interest. If this quantity continue the same, the burden of the national debt is the same to all intents and purposes, be the capital more or less.
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From whence, then, could arise the solitary and strange conceit that the Almighty, who had millions of worlds equally dependant on His protection, should quit the care of all the rest, and come to die in our world, because, they say, one man and one woman had eaten an apple?
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Where there are no distinctions there can be no superiority perfect equality affords no temptation.
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The final event to himself has been, that as he rose like a rocket, he fell like the stick.
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The duty of man is not a wilderness of turnpike gates, through which he is to pass by tickets from one to the other. It is plain and simple, and consists but of two points--his duty God, which every man must feel and, with respect to his neighbor, to do as he would be done by.
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His [Jesus'] historians, having brought him into the world in a supernatural manner, were obliged to take him out again in the same manner, or the first part of the story must have fallen to the ground.
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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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We must be compelled to hold this doctrine to be false, and the old and new law called the Old and New Testament, to be impositions, fables and forgeries.
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Compassion, the fairest associate of the heart.
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All men can understand what representation is and that it must necessarily include a variety of knowledge and talents.
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Wisdom is not the purchase of a day, and it is no wonder that we should err at the first setting off.
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Every religion is good that teaches man to be good and I know of none that instructs him to be bad.
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And to read the Bible without horror, we must undo everything that is tender, sympathizing and benevolent in the heart of man.
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The balance of power is the scale of peace. The same balance would be preserved were all the world not destitute of arms, for all would be alike but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside ... Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them ... the weak will become prey to the strong.
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