A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.
Thomas PaineRead
All Of Us Might Wish At Times That We Lived In A More Tranquil World....(yet) Our Times Are Challenging And Filled With Opportunity.
Interpretation
Even in a chaotic world, there are always opportunities for growth and change.
Thomas Paine suggests that while we often yearn for a peaceful existence, the challenges we face in our times also bring about significant opportunities for personal and societal development. Instead of fearing difficulties, we should recognize them as catalysts for progress.
In practice
In a motivational speech about embracing difficulties as a way to grow and improve.
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
Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.
The use of "religion" as an excuse to repress the freedom of expression and to deny human rights is not confined to any country or time.
One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people's minds.
See! those fiendish lineaments graven on the darkness, the writhed lip of scorn, the mockery of that living eye, the pointed finger, touching the sore place in your heart! Do you remember any act of enormous folly, at which you would blush, even in the remotest cavern of the earth? Then recognize your Shame.
What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the winter time. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the Sunset.
This will be the day when we shall bring into full realization the dream of American democracy - a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few.
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