Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favour; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom.
 Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776). copy citation

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Author Thomas Paine
Source Common Sense
Topic appearance wrong custom
Date 1776
Language English
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Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/files/147/147-h/147-h.htm

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PHILADELPHIA Printed and sold by W. & T. Bradford, February 14, 1776.
MDCCLXXVI Common Sense By Thomas Paine 1 INTRODUCTION.
Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.
2 As a long and violent abuse of power, is generally the Means of calling the right of it in question (and in Matters too which might never have been thought of, had not the Sufferers been aggravated into the inquiry) and as the King of England hath undertaken in his own Right, to support the Parliament in what he calls Theirs, and as the good people of this country are grievously oppressed by the combination, they have an undoubted privilege to inquire into the pretensions of both, and equally to reject the usurpation of either.” source

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