“It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.”

1790s, The Age of Reason, Part I (1794)

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Thomas Paine 262
English and American political activist 1737–1809

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Variant translations:
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