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About this quote

What does it mean?
New ideas often face resistance because people mistake habit for correctness, but time eventually wins.
In plain terms
Familiarity makes wrong things seem right until change happens.
What can you take from it?
Trust time to correct social wrongs.

Where it applies

  • social reform
  • new ideas
  • traditions

Putting it to work

  • patient advocacy
  • education over time

Questions to consider

  • Why do we resist change?
  • How long until habits shift?

Another view

Time does not guarantee progress without active effort.

More from Thomas Paine

  1. The christian religion is a parody on the worship of the Sun, in which they put a man whom they call Christ, in the place of the Sun, and pay him the same ador…

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  2. The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind. Many circumstances hath, and will arise, which are not local, but universal, and through w…

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  3. Man is not the enemy of man but through the medium of a false system of government.

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