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...the individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.

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
Personal
Mode
Principles
Sovereign
Individual
Governments
Government
Arise
Right
Individuals
Principle
Exist
Compact
Produce
Entered

More quotes by Thomas Paine

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It is not the nature of avarice to be satisfied with anything but money. Every passion that acts upon mankind has a peculiar mode of operation. Many of them are temporary and fluctuating they admit of cessation and variety. But avarice is a fixed, uniform passion.
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A single legislature, on account of the superabundance of its power, and the uncontrolled rabidity of its execution, becomes as dangerous to the principles of liberty as that of a despotic monarch.
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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.
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Immediate necessity makes many things convenient, which if continued would grow into oppressions.
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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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They took care to represent government as a thing made up of mysteries, which only themselves understood, and they hid from the understanding of the nation, the only thing that was beneficial to know, namely, that government is nothing more than a national association acting on the principles of society.
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How necessary it is at all times to watch against the attempted encroachment of power, and to prevent its running to excess.
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If there was ever a just war since the world began, it is this in which America is now engaged.
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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.
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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.
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It is unpleasant to see character throw itself away.
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The graceful pride of truth knows no extremes, and preserves, in every latitude of life, the right-angled character of man.
Thomas Paine
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All the religions known in the world are founded, so far as they relate to man or the unity of man, as being all of one degree. Whether in heaven or in hell, or in whatever state man may be supposed to exist hereafter, the good and the bad are the only distinctions.
Thomas Paine
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Accustom a people to believe that priests, or any other class of men can forgive sins and you will have sins in abundance.
Thomas Paine
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Better fare hard with good men than feast it with bad.
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Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise.
Thomas Paine
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If any generation of men ever possessed the right of dictating the mode by which the world should be governed for ever, it was the first generation that existed and if that generation did it not, no succeeding generation can show any authority for doing it, nor can set any up.
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Human nature is not of itself vicious.
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Government has no right to make itself a party in any debates respecting the principles or mode of forming or of changing, constitutions. It is not for the benefit of those who exercise the powers of government, that constitutions, and the governments issuing from them, are established.
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What is it the Bible teaches us? - raping, cruelty, and murder. What is it the New Testament teaches us? - to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married, and the belief of this debauchery is called faith.
Thomas Paine