A Constitution is not the act of a Government, but of a people constituting a government, and a government without a constitution is a power without right.
THOMAS PAINEThe strength and power of despotism consists wholly in the fear of resistance.
More Thomas Paine Quotes
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A constitution defines and limits the powers of the government it creates. It therefore follows, as a natural and also a logical result, that the governmental exercise of any power not authorized by the constitution is an assumed power, and therefore illegal.
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We repose an unwise confidence in any government, or in any men, when we invest them officially with too much, or an unnecessary quantity of, discretionary power.
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Some people can be reasoned into sense, and others must be shocked into it.
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If those to whom power is delegated do well, they will be respected; if not, they will be despised.
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Where knowledge is a duty, ignorance is a crime.
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The right of voting for representatives , is the primary right by which other rights are protected.
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A nation under a well regulated government, should permit none to remain uninstructed. It is monarchical and aristocratical government only that requires ignorance for its support.
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Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.
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Rights are not gifts from one man to another, nor from one class of men to another. It is impossible to discover any origin of rights otherwise than in the origin of man; it consequently follows that rights appertain to man in right of his existence, and must therefore be equal to every man.
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What is it the Bible teaches us? – raping, cruelty, and murder. What is it the New Testament teaches us? – to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married, and the belief of this debauchery is called faith.
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Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.
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Men should not petition for rights, but take them.
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When extraordinary power and extraordinary pay are allotted to any individual in a government, he becomes the center, round which every kind of corruption generates and forms.
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Taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes.
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Our greatest enemies, the ones we must fight most often, are within.
THOMAS PAINE