A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.
Thomas PaineRead
Human nature is not of itself vicious.
Interpretation
Human nature is inherently good, not evil.
Thomas Paine's quote suggests that humans are born with a fundamental goodness and are not inherently disposed to vice. Instead, it is societal influences and circumstances that lead individuals to act in harmful or immoral ways, implying a belief in the potential for human goodness and the importance of positive environments in cultivating this trait.
In practice
In a discussion on moral philosophy, one might reference this quote to argue that society shapes individual behavior.
A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.
That God cannot lie, is no advantage to your argument, because it is no proof that priests can not, or that the Bible does not.
I consider the war of America against Britain as the country's war, the public's war, or the war of the people in their own behalf, for the security of their natural rights, and the protection of their own property.
Had the news of salvation by Jesus Christ been inscribed on the face of the sun and the moon, in characters that all nations would have understood, the whole earth had known it in twenty-four hours, and all nations would have believed it; whereas, though it is now almost two thousand years since, as they tell us, Christ came upon earth, not a twentieth part of the people of the earth know anything of it, and among those who do, the wiser part do not believe it.
The end of all political associations is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man; and these rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance of oppression.
To reason with goverments, as they have existed for ages, is to argue with brutes. It is only from the nations themselves that reforms can be expected
What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?
The trouble with you and me, is that we don't live in the real world. We dream of fantastic things that may never happen.
At the heart of the matter is a battle between wish and fear. Fear generally proves stronger than a wish, but it leaves a taste of disappointment on the tongue.
Modern biblical scholars have established that the bible is a wiki. It was compiled over half a millennium from writers with different styles, dialects, character names, and conceptions of God and was subjected to haphazard editing that left it with many contradictions, duplications and non-sequiturs.
The love of liberty that is not a real principle of dutiful behavior to authority is as hypocritical as the religion that is not productive of a good life.
One of the greatest dangers is secular religion - state worship.
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