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Thomas Paine -
Rights of Man (1791)
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Titles are but nick-names, and every nick-name is a title.
Thomas Paine
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Statues of marble or brass will perish; and statues made in imitation of them are not the same statues,... But print and reprint a thought a thousand times over, and that with materials of any kind... the thought is eternally and identically the same thought in every case.
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Call to mind the sentiments which nature has engraved on the heart of every citizen, and which take a new force when they are solemnly recognised by all:-For a nation to love liberty, it is sufficient that she knows it; and to be free, it is sufficient that she wills it.
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Reason and Ignorance, the opposites of each other, influence the great bulk of mankind. If either of these can be rendered sufficiently extensive in a country, the machinery of Government goes easily on. Reason obeys itself; and Ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.
Thomas Paine
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The instant formal government is abolished, society begins to act. A general association takes place, and common interest produces common security.
Thomas Paine
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To say that any people are not fit for freedom, is to make poverty their choice, and to say they had rather be loaded with taxes than not.
Thomas Paine
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What were formerly called revolutions were little more than a change of persons…what we now see in the world, from the revolutions of America and France, is a renovation of the natural order of things.
Thomas Paine
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There is an unnatural unfitness in an aristocracy to be legislators for a nation. Their ideas of distributive justice are corrupted at the very source. They begin life trampling on all their younger brothers and sisters, and relations of every kind, and are taught and educated so to do. With what ideas of justice or honor can that man enter a house of legislation, who absorbs in his own person the inheritance of a whole family of children, or metes out some pitiful portion with the insolence of a gift?
Thomas Paine
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Aristocracy has a tendency to degenerate the human species.
Thomas Paine
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Reason, like time, will make its own way, and prejudice will fall in a combat with interest.
Thomas Paine
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Aristocracy is kept up by family tyranny and injustice.
Thomas Paine
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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 of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies.
Thomas Paine
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A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue, but moderation in principle is always a vice.
Thomas Paine
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It is for the good of nations, and not for the emolument or aggrandizement of particular individuals, that government ought to be established, and that mankind are at the expense of supporting it. The defects of every government and constitution both as to principle and form, must, on a parity of reasoning, be as open to discussion as the defects of a law, and it is a duty which every man owes to society to point them out.
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With respect to the two Houses, of which the English Parliament is composed, they appear to be effectually influenced into one, and as a legislature, to have no temper of its own. The Minister, whoever he at any time may be, touches it as with an opium wand, and it sleeps obedience.
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I do not believe that any two men, on what are called doctrinal points, think alike who think at all. It is only those who have not thought that appear to agree.
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Persecution is not an original feature of any religion; but it is always the strongly marked feature of all law-religions, or religions established by law.
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Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, — and all it wants, — is the liberty of appearing. The sun needs no inscription to distinguish him from darkness; and no sooner did the American governments display themselves to the world, than despotism felt a shock and man began to contemplate redress.
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Man is not the enemy of man, but through the medium of a false system of Government. Instead, therefore, of exclaiming against the ambition of kings, the exclamation should be directed against the principle of such governments; and instead of seeking to reform the individual, the wisdom of a nation should apply itself to reform the system.
Thomas Paine
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Quote of the day
The true spirit of conversation consists in building on another man's observation, not overturning it.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Thomas Paine
Creative Commons
Born:
January 29, 1737
Died:
June 8, 1809
(aged 72)
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