Thomas Paine
Quotes from Thomas Paine
"Accustom a people to believe that priests, or any other class
of men can forgive sins, and you will have sins in abundance."
"The story of Jesus Christ appearing after he was dead is the
story of an apparition, such as timid imaginations can always
create in vision, and credulity believe. Stories of this kind had
been told of the assassination of Julius Caesar..."
"The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches,
is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no
principles; it proceeds by no authority; it has no data; it can
demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion."
"Every phrase and cirsumstance are marked with the barbarous
hand of superstitious torture, and forced into meanings it was
impossible they could have. The head of every chapter, and the top
of every page, are blazoned with the names of Christ and the Church,
that the unwary reader might suck in the error before he began to
read."
"All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish,
Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions,
set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and
profit."
"Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous
debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting
vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it
would be more consistant that we call it the word of a demon than
the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to
corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest
it, as I detest everything that is cruel."
"..but the Bible is such a book of lies and contradictions
there is no knowing which part to believe or whether any..."
"The NT, compared with the Old, is like a farce of one act..."
"There are matters in the Bible, said to be done by the
express commandment of God, that are shocking to humanity and to
every idea we have of moral justice...."
"Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there
is no more
derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifiying to man,
more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than
this thing called Christianity."
"As to the book called the bible, it is blasphemy to call it
the Word of God. It is a book of lies and contradictions and a
history of bad times and bad men."