A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.
Thomas PaineRead
Take away from Genesis the belief that Moses was the author, on which only the strange believe that it is the word of God has stood, and there remains nothing of Genesis but an anonymous book of stories, fables, and traditionary or invented absurdities, or of downright lies.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote critiques the belief in the divine authorship of Genesis by questioning its authorship and content.
Thomas Paine argues that if one removes the belief in Moses as the author of Genesis, the text becomes nothing more than a collection of anonymous stories and myths that lack divine truth. He suggests that the reverence given to Genesis is based on unsubstantiated beliefs rather than historical or factual integrity, implying that the contents can be seen as fabricated or exaggerated narratives.
Themes
GenesisMosesBeliefTruthStoriesPhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion on the validity of religious texts, this quote can illustrate skepticism towards traditional beliefs.
More from Thomas Paine
All quotes →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.
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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.
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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.
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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
Thomas PaineRead
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