Thomas Paine

Author

1737 – 1809

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Who was Thomas Paine?

Thomas Paine was an English-American political activist, author, political theorist and revolutionary. As the author of two highly influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution, he inspired the Patriots in 1776 to declare independence from Britain. His ideas reflected Enlightenment-era rhetoric of transnational human rights. He has been called "a corsetmaker by trade, a journalist by profession, and a propagandist by inclination".

Born in Thetford, England, in the county of Norfolk, Paine emigrated to the British American colonies in 1774 with the help of Benjamin Franklin, arriving just in time to participate in the American Revolution. His principal contributions were the powerful, widely-read pamphlet Common Sense that advocated colonial America's independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain, and The American Crisis, a pro-revolutionary pamphlet series. Common Sense was so influential that John Adams said, "Without the pen of the author of Common Sense, the sword of Washington would have been raised in vain."

Paine lived in France for most of the 1790s, becoming deeply involved in the French Revolution. He wrote the Rights of Man, in part a defence of the French Revolution against its critics. His attacks on British writer Edmund Burke led to a trial and conviction in absentia in 1792 for the crime of seditious libel. In 1792, despite not being able to speak French, he was elected to the French National Convention. The Girondists regarded him as an ally. Consequently, the Montagnards, especially Robespierre, regarded him as an enemy.

Famous Quotes:

  • Everything that is right or natural pleads for separation. The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries, 'Tis time to part.
  • It is not a field of a few acres of ground, but a cause, that we are defending, and whether we defeat the enemy in one battle, or by ;degrees, the consequences will be the same.
  • I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.
  • It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.
  • These are the times that try men's souls.
  • It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.
  • Those words, temperate and moderate, are words either of political cowardice, or of cunning, or seduction. A thing, moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper, is always a virtue; but moderation in principle, is a species of vice.
  • To establish any mode to abolish war, however advantageous it might be to Nations, would be to take from such Government the most lucrative of its branches.
  • Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
  • We have it in our power to begin the world over again.

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Born
Feb 9, 1737
Thetford
Also known as
  • Thomas Pain
  • Paine
Parents
Spouses
Religion
  • Deism
Nationality
  • United States of America
Profession
Education
  • Thetford Grammar School
    (1744 - 1749)
Died
Jun 8, 1809
New York City

Submitted
on July 23, 2013

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"Thomas Paine." Biographies.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 19 Mar. 2024. <https://www.biographies.net/people/en/thomas_paine>.

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