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When authors and critics talk of the sublime, they see not how nearly it borders on the ridiculous.

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
Ridiculous
Critics
Talk
Authors
Sublime
Borders
Nearly

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Prophesying is lying professionally.
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He who takes nature for his guide, is not easily beaten out of his argument
Thomas Paine
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Arms, like laws, discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe and preserve order.
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I detest the Bible as I detest everything that is cruel.
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If any generation of men ever possessed the right of dictating the mode by which the world should be governed for ever, it was the first generation that existed and if that generation did it not, no succeeding generation can show any authority for doing it, nor can set any up.
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The greatest characters the world has known, have rose on the democratic floor. Aristocracy has not been able to keep a proportionate pace with democracy.
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The right of voting for representatives , is the primary right by which other rights are protected.
Thomas Paine
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For all men being originally equals, no one by birth could have the right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others forever, and tho' himself might deserve some decent degree of honours of his cotemporaries, yet his descendants might be far too unworthy to inherit them.
Thomas Paine
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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.
Thomas Paine
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It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.
Thomas Paine
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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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The people of America are a people of property almost every man is a freeholder.
Thomas Paine
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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.
Thomas Paine
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... in free countries the law ought to be King and there ought to be no other.
Thomas Paine
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Persecution is not an original feature in any religion but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law.
Thomas Paine
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It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving, it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.
Thomas Paine
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Common sense will tell us, that the power which hath endeavoured to subdue us, is of all others, the most improper to defend us.
Thomas Paine
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...It would be more consistent that we call [the Bible] the work of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.
Thomas Paine
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Reputation is what men and women think of us character is what God and angels know of us.
Thomas Paine
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Suspicion and persecution are weeds of the same dunghill, and flourish best together.
Thomas Paine