A new case is to them a new world, and while they are seeking for a parallel they get lost.
Thomas Paine: “A new case is to them a new world, and while they are seeking for a parallel they get lost.”
Editor's note · Context
Paine critiques the inability of certain politicians to adapt to new situations, suggesting their reliance on precedent makes them ineffective in novel circumstances.
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Reason and discussion, persuasion and conviction, become the weapons in the contest, and it is only when those are attempted to be suppressed that recourse is had to violence.
It is a great standing which they have now universally obtained; and we may hereafter hope to see revolutions, or changes in governments, produced with the same quiet operation by which any measure, determinable by reason and discussion…
Where these can have the opportunity of acting, opposition dies with fear, or crumbles away by conviction.
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