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"Every man who knows anything of languages, knows that it is impossible to translate from one language into another, not only without losing a great part of the original, but frequently of mistaking the sense."
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"The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, an almost fanatical love of justice and the desire for personal independence -- these are the features of the Jewish tradition which make me thank my stars that I belong to it."

"Experience teaches us that the world is not a nursery."

"In worthy teaching, all things are related."

"It is pleasant to be transferred from an office where one is afraid of a sergeant-major into an office where one can intimidate generals and perhaps this is why history is so attractive to the more timid among us."

"Have books 'happened' to you? Unless your answer to that question is 'yes,' I'm unsure how to talk to you."

"In the sort of screen dappled with different states of mind which my consciousness would simultaneously unfold while I read, and which ranged from the aspirations hidden deepest within me to the completely exterior vision of the horizon which I had, at the bottom of the garden, before my eyes, what was first in me, innermost, the constantly moving handle that controlled the rest, was my belief in the philosophical richness and beauty of the book I was reading, and my desire to appropriate them for myself, whatever that book might be."
Explore more quotes by Thomas Paine


"We can only reason from what is; we can reason on actualities, but not on possibilities."


"What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value."


"He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself."


"All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."


"The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum."


"One of the strongest natural proofs of the folly of hereditary right in kings, is, that nature disapproves it, otherwise, she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule by giving mankind an ass for a lion."


"Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness. Society promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, government negatively by restraining our vices. Society encourages intercourse. Government creates distinctions."


"If I owe a person money, and cannot pay him, and he threatens to put me in prison, another person can take the debt upon himself, and pay it for me. But if I have committed a crime, every circumstance of the case is changed. Moral justice cannot take the innocent for the guilty even if the innocent would offer itself. To suppose justice to do this, is to destroy the principle of its existence, which is the thing itself. It is then no longer justice. It is indiscriminate revenge."


"Common sense will tell us, thatthe power which hath endeavoured to subdue us, is of all others, themost improper to defend us."
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