If men will permit themselves to think, as rational beings ought to think, nothing can appear more ridiculous and absurd, exclusive of all moral reflections, than to be at the expense of building navies, filling them with men, and then hauling them into the ocean, to try which can sink each other fastest.
From "Rights of Man," Paine critiques the irrationality and cost of naval warfare between nations.
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By the former, freedom has a national champion in the western world; and by the latter, in Europe.
Reason and discussion will soon bring things right, however wrong they may begin.