I would advise you not to attempt Unchaining The Tiger, but to burn this piece before it is seen by any other person. ... If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be Without it? Think how many inconsiderate and inexperienced youth of both sexes there are, who have need of the motives of religion to restrain them from vice, to support their virtue, and retain them in the practice of it till it becomes habitual.
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Claimed by the American Tract Society, in a mid-19th century pamphlet titled "Don't Unchain the Tiger", to have been conveyed by Franklin in a letter to Thomas Paine, regarding The Age of Reason, Paine's deistic work which criticized orthodox Christianity. Identified as a misattribution in Calvin Blanchard, The Life of Thomas Paine (1860), p. 73, noting that Franklin died in 1790, while Paine did not begin writing The Age of Reason until 1793. Reported as "Don't unchain the tiger!" in Paul F. Boller, Jr., and John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, & Misleading Attributions (1989), p. 28.Benjamin Franklin
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