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To possess ourselves of a clear idea of what government is, or ought to be, we must trace it to its origin.
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
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Thetford
Norfolk
Ought
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Government
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More quotes by Thomas Paine
The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery, for slavery consists in being subject to the will of another, and he that has not a vote in the election of representatives is in this case.
Thomas Paine
I believe in one God, and no more and I hope for happiness beyond this life.
Thomas Paine
THE WORD OF GOD IS THE CREATION WE BEHOLD: And it is in this word, which no human invention can counterfeit or alter, that God speaketh universally to man.
Thomas Paine
The reformation was preceded by the discovery of America, as if the Almighty graciously meant to open a sanctuary to the persecuted in future years, when home should afford neither friendship nor safety.
Thomas Paine
Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst.
Thomas Paine
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.
Thomas Paine
The creation is the Bible of the Deist. He there reads, in the handwriting of the Creator himself, the certainty of His existence and the immutability of His power, and all other Bibles and Testaments are to him forgeries.
Thomas Paine
Not a place upon earth might be so happy as America. Her situation is remote from all the wrangling world, and she has nothing to do but to trade with them.
Thomas Paine
A share in two revolutions is living to some purpose.
Thomas Paine
The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the study of nothing.
Thomas Paine
The mind, in discovering truths, acts in the same manner as it acts through the eye in discovering objects when once any object has been seen, it is impossible to put the mind back to the same condition it was in before it saw it.
Thomas Paine
The Book of Job and the 19th Psalm, which even the Church admits to be more ancient than the chronological order in which they stand in the book called the Bible, are theological orations conformable to the original system of theology.
Thomas Paine
But such is the irresistable nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants is the liberty of appearing.
Thomas Paine
Each government accuses the other of perfidy, intrigue and ambition, as a means of heating the imagination of their respective nations, and incensing them to hostilities. Man is not the enemy of man, but through the medium of a false system of government.
Thomas Paine
...the Bible is such a book of lies and contradictions there is no knowing which part to believe or whether any.
Thomas Paine
It is unpleasant to see character throw itself away.
Thomas Paine
As priestcraft was always the enemy of knowledge, because priestcraft supports itself by keeping people in delusion and ignorance, it was consistent with its policy to make the acquisition of knowledge a real sin.
Thomas Paine
No country can be called free which is governed by an absolute power and it matters not whether it be an absolute royal power or an absolute legislative power, as the consequences will be the same to the people.
Thomas Paine
Compassion, the fairest associate of the heart.
Thomas Paine
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?
Thomas Paine