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When extraordinary power and extraordinary pay are allotted to any individual in a government, he becomes the center, round which every kind of corruption generates and forms.

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
Politics
Corruption
Individual
Round
Political
Rounds
Form
Center
Power
Forms
Government
Extraordinary
Every
Pay
Allotted
Kind
Becomes
Generates

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Peace, which costs nothing, is attended with infinitely more advantage than any victory with all its expence.
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Reason obeys itself and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.
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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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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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A little matter will move a party, but it must be something great that moves a nation.
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On this question of war, three things are to be considered. First, the right of declaring it: secondly, the expense of supporting it: thirdly, the mode of conducting it after it is declared.
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The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the study of nothing.
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All Of Us Might Wish At Times That We Lived In A More Tranquil World....(yet) Our Times Are Challenging And Filled With Opportunity.
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He who takes nature for his guide, is not easily beaten out of his argument
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Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all cases as the ages and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies.
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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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Every Tory is a coward for servile, slavish, self-interested fear is the foundation of Toryism and a man under such influence, though he may be cruel, never can be brave.
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Reputation is what men and women think of us character is what God and angels know of us.
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We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in.
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We have every opportunity and every encouragement before us, to form the noblest truest constitution on the face of the earth. We have it in our power to begin the world over again.
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An army of principles will penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot.
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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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What at first was plunder assumed the softer name of revenue.
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But such is the irresistable nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants is the liberty of appearing.
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It is unpleasant to see character throw itself away.
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