A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.
Thomas PaineRead
Yet this is trash that the Church imposes upon the world as the Word of God; this is the collection of lies and contradictions called the Holy Bible! This is the rubbish called Revealed Religion!
Interpretation
The quote criticizes the Bible and organized religion as flawed and misleading.
Thomas Paine expresses a strong opinion against the Bible, labeling it as a collection of lies and contradictions imposed by the Church as divine truth. His statement reflects a broader critique of revealed religion and the impact it has on society, emphasizing skepticism toward established religious doctrines.
In practice
In a discussion about the role of religion in society, one might quote Paine to challenge traditional beliefs.
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
Suffering is the substance of life and the root of personality, for it is only suffering that makes us persons.
I think the greatest of people in society carved niches that represented the unique expression of their combinations of talents, and if everyone had the luxury of expressing the unique combinations of talents in this world, our society would be transformed overnight.
What is this word that broke through the fence of your teeth, Atreides?
Most climbers aren't in fact deranged, they're just infected with a particularly virulent strain of the Human Condition.
The kingdom of heaven is worth infinitely more than the cost of discipleship, and those who know where the treasure lies joyfully abandon everything else to secure it.
Stripped of all its covering, the naked question is, whether ours is a federal or consolidated government; a constitutional or absolute one; a government resting solidly on the basis of the sovereignty of the States, or on the unrestrained will of a majority; a form of government, as in all other unlimited ones, in which injustice, violence, and force must ultimately prevail.
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