Essays on Thomas Paine

February 9, 1737, Thetford, United Kingdom

June 8, 1809, Greenwich Village, New York, United States

• Mary Lambert ​(m. 1759)​
• Elizabeth Ollive​(m. 1771; separated 1774)

Age of Enlightenment

• "These are the times that try men's souls."
• "What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value."
• "The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."

February 9, 1737 – June 8, 1809

Thomas Paine was an English-born American political activist, philosopher, political theorist, and revolutionary. He authored Common Sense (1776) and The American Crisis (1776–1783), two of the most influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution, and helped inspire the Patriots in 1776 to declare independence from Great Britain. His ideas reflected Enlightenment-era ideals of transnational human rights.

Paine has a claim to the title The Father of the American Revolution, which rests on his pamphlets, especially Common Sense, which crystallized sentiment for independence in 1776. By promoting the idea of American exceptionalism and the need to form a new nation to realize its promise, Paine's pamphlet not only attracted public support for the Revolution, but put the rebellion's leaders under pressure to declare independence.

Common Sense (1776), The American Crisis (1776–1783), Rights of Man (1791), The Age of Reason (1793–1794), Agrarian Justice (1797)

In The Age of Reason and other writings Paine advocated Deism, promoted reason and freethought, and argued against institutionalized religions in general and the Christian doctrine in particular. The theme of the pamphlet The Common Sense is the inevitability of American independence and the problems with monarchy.

Thomas Paine challenged the principles of liberty, equality, and justice. He was a revolutionary thinker who used Enlightenment ideology as a platform to persuade towards the founding of an independant America, and towards the founding of the Declaration of Independence.

“The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark.”
“These are the times that try men's souls.”
“Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another; and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess.”
“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.”