Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine was an English-born political philosopher and revolutionary whose plain-spoken, electrifying pamphlets — above all Common Sense and Rights of Man — helped inspire the American and French Revolutions and shaped modern democratic thought.

Thomas Paine emigrated from England to the American colonies in 1774, and within two years had written Common Sense (1776), the incendiary pamphlet that helped transform colonial discontent into a movement for independence. Written in plain, forceful language for ordinary readers, it became one of the most widely read and influential political documents ever published.

Paine went on to write The American Crisis, which sustained revolutionary morale, and later Rights of Man, a defense of the French Revolution, and The Age of Reason, a controversial critique of organized religion. A radical democrat and champion of human rights throughout his life, he was celebrated and reviled in equal measure.

Paine’s gift for making complex political ideas vivid and accessible to a mass audience makes him one of the founding voices of modern democracy and a permanent model of persuasive writing.