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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.

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
Three
Declared
Firsts
Mode
First
Supporting
Right
Expense
Things
Expenses
Thirdly
Considered
Secondly
Question
Declaring
War
Conducting

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When my country, into which I had just set my foot, was set on fire about my ears, it was time to stir. It was time for every man to stir.
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A nation under a well regulated government, should permit none to remain uninstructed. It is monarchical and aristocratical government only that requires ignorance for its support.
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He who takes nature for his guide, is not easily beaten out of his argument
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He, who survives his reputation, lives out of despite himself, like a man listening to his own reproach.
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I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.
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It is a fraud of the Christian system to call the sciences human invention it is only the application of them that is human.
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Lay then the axe to the root, and teach governments humanity. It is their sanguinary punishments which corrupt mankind.
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Taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes.
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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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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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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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A government of our own is our natural right and when a man seriously reflects on the precariousness of human affairs, he will become convinced, that it is infinitely wiser and safer, to form a constitution of our own in a cool deliberate manner, while we have it in our power, than to trust such an interesting event to time and chance.
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...the true greatness of a nation is founded on principles of humanity.
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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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It is the fable of Jesus Christ, as told in the New Testament, and the wild and visionary doctrine raised thereon, against which I contend. The story, taking it as it is told, is blasphemously obscene.
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Not all the treasures of the world, so far as I believe, could have induced me to support an offensive war, for I think it murder but if a thief breaks into my house, burns and destroys my property, and kills or threatens to kill me, or those that are in it, and to bind me in all cases whatsoever to his absolute will, am I to suffer it?
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If anything had or could have a value equal to gold and silver, it would require no tender law and if it had not that value it ought not to have such a law and, therefore, all tender laws are tyrannical and unjust and calculated to support fraud and oppression.
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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.
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It is from our enemies that we often gain excellent maxims, and are frequently surprised into reason by their mistakes.
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