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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 Paine
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Interpretation

What this quote means

True change in government must come from the people, not from debates with those in power.

Thomas Paine emphasizes the futility of trying to persuade governments that have long been entrenched in their ways, likening them to 'brutes'. He advocates for the notion that real reform and progress can only arise from the collective will and action of the people themselves rather than through negotiations with established authorities.

Themes

GovernmentReformPeopleChangeAction

In practice

Example use cases

During a political rally where grassroots movements are discussed.

More from Thomas Paine

A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.
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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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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.
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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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Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man.
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