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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
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Ideas
More quotes by Thomas Paine
[A]ll churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim, are simply human inventions. They use fear to enslave us. They are a monopoly for power and profit.
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
Prejudice, like the spider, makes everywhere its home. It has neither taste nor choice of place, and all that it requires is room. If the one prepares her food by poisoning it to her palate and her use, the other does the same. Prejudice may be denominated the spider of the mind.
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 aristocracy are not the farmers who work the land, and raise the produce, but are the mere consumers of the rent and when compared with the active world, are the drones, a seraglio of males, who neither collect the honey nor form the hive, but exist only for lazy enjoyment.
Thomas Paine
Nothing, they say is more certain than death, and nothing more uncertain than the time of dying
Thomas Paine
The right of voting for representatives , is the primary right by which other rights are protected.
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 danger to which the success of revolutions is most exposed, is that of attempting them before the principles on which they proceed, and the advantages to result from them, are sufficiently seen and understood.
Thomas Paine
Those who expect to reap the blessing of freedom must undertake to support it.
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
But where, says some, is the King of America? I'll tell you. Friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Britain.
Thomas Paine
Change of ministers amounts to nothing. One goes out, another comes in, and still the same measures, vices, and extravagances are pursued. It signifies not who is minister. The defect lies in the system. The foundation and superstructure of the government is bad. Prop it as you please, it continually sinks and ever will.
Thomas Paine
Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.
Thomas Paine
When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to [profess] things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.
Thomas Paine
My country is wherever liberty lives.
Thomas Paine
I believe in one God, and no more and I hope for happiness beyond this life.
Thomas Paine
The American constitutions were to liberty, what a grammar is to language: they define its parts of speech, and practically construct them into syntax
Thomas Paine
Christianity is the strangest religion ever set up, for it committed a murder upon Jesus in order to redeem mankind from the sin of eating an apple.
Thomas Paine
Wrong cannot have a legal descendant.
Thomas Paine
