If we would delineate human nature with a baseness of heart and hypocrisy of countenance that reflection would shudder at and humanity disown, it is kings, courts and cabinets that must sit for the portrait.
Thomas Paine: “If we would delineate human nature with a baseness of heart and hypocrisy of countenance that reflection would shudder…”
Editor's note · Context
In "Rights of Man," Paine asserts that the corruption and hypocrisy often attributed to human nature are actually embodied by monarchical systems.
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