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Columns

Britain doesn’t need reinventing

10 December 2022

9:00 AM

10 December 2022

9:00 AM

What is the most hubristic line ever written? Against some very stiff competition I would say it is that famous line of Thomas Paine, from the February 1776 appendix to his pamphlet Common Sense: ‘We have it in our power to begin the world over again.’

One of the problems of the line is that even just typing it or reading it brings goose bumps.

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