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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

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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
Succeed
Disposed
Generations
Succeeding
Present
Wrongs
Free
Descent
Cannot
Slaves
Doe
Legal
Right
Slave
Generation
Lessen

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Government is a necessary evil
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The declaration which says that God visits the sins of the fathers upon the children is contrary to every principle of moral justice.
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Kill the king but spare the man.
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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.
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We repose an unwise confidence in any government, or in any men, when we invest them officially with too much, or an unnecessary quantity of, discretionary power.
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No nation ought to be without a debt. A national debt is a national bond and when it bears no interest, is in no case a grievance.
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And when we view a flag, which to the eye is beautiful, and to contemplate its rise and origin inspires a sensation of sublime delight, our national honor must unite with our interests to prevent injury to the one, or insult to the other.
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Reason obeys itself and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.
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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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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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That there are men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the quarrels of Nations is as shocking as it is true.
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The people of America are a people of property almost every man is a freeholder.
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I fear not, I see not reason for fear. In the end we will be the victors. For though at times the flame of liberty may cease to shine, the ember will never expire.
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It has been the scheme of the Christian Church, and of all the other invented systems of religion, to hold man in ignorance of the Creator, as it is of Government to hold man in ignorance of his rights. The systems of the one are as false as those of the other, and are calculated for mutual support.
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It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.
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To believe that God created a plurality of worlds, at least as numerous as what we call stars, renders the Christian faith at once little and ridiculous and scatters it in the mind like feathers in the air.
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Suspicion and persecution are weeds of the same dunghill, and flourish best together.
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Arms, like laws, discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe and preserve order.
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That which we obtain too easily, we esteem too lightly.
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