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Titles are but nicknames, and every nickname is a title. The thing is perfectly harmless in itself, but it marks a sort of foppery in the human character, which degrades it.

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
Human
Degrade
Humans
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Thing
Title
Every
Titles
Perfectly
Degrades
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Harmless

More quotes by Thomas Paine

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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
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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.
Thomas Paine
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It will be proper to take a review of the several sources from which governments have arisen, and on which they have been founded.
Thomas Paine
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Thus commerce, though in itself a moral nullity, has had a considerable influence in tempering the human mind....he trades with the same countries ...(that he) would have gone to war with.
Thomas Paine
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The final event to himself has been, that as he rose like a rocket, he fell like the stick.
Thomas Paine
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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
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Men did not make the earth... It is the value of the improvements only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property. ... Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds.
Thomas Paine
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Now is the seedtime of continental union, faith and honor. The least fracture now, will be like a name engraved with the point of a pin on the tender rind of a young oak the wound would enlarge with the tree, and posterity read in it full grown characters.
Thomas Paine
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Let them call me rebel, and welcome, I feel no concern from it.
Thomas Paine
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The representative system of government is calculated to produce the wisest laws, by collecting wisdom where it can be found.
Thomas Paine
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That which we obtain too easily, we esteem too lightly.
Thomas Paine
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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.
Thomas Paine
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It is only by the exercise of reason that man can discover God.
Thomas Paine
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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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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.
Thomas Paine
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The Christian system of religion is an outrage on common sense.
Thomas Paine
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Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself.
Thomas Paine
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As my object was not myself, I set out with the determination, and happily with the disposition, of not being moved by praise or censure, friendship or calumny, nor of being drawn from my purpose by any personal altercation and the man who cannot do this, is not fit for a public character.
Thomas Paine
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Public credit is suspicion asleep.
Thomas Paine
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The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.
Thomas Paine