A More Complete Quote from Common Sense: Russia and several other countries now in protest for democracy, I think it would help to read a longer version of the quotation of Paine’s work
As I wrote in my previous post, “The Common Sense of Thomas Paine in the Arab World“, Thomas Paine’s famous work, Common Sense, is very relevant to the conversations of nation building going on in the Arab World. With Russia and several other countries now in protest for democracy, I think it would help to read a longer version of the quotation of Paine’s work. The full pamphlet by Paine can be read for free online at this link here but I urge you to at least read the first paragraphs of Paine’s monumental work pasted here. Quote from Common Sense:
SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.
Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him, out of two evils to choose the least. Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others.
A link to the Thomas Paine Wikipedia post will take you to more information on this amazing life.
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