Thomas Paine

Biography

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) was an English-born American political philosopher, revolutionary, and writer whose pamphlets helped shape the course of two revolutions. His Common Sense (1776) galvanized American independence, selling hundreds of thousands of copies and providing the intellectual case for breaking with Britain. The American Crisis papers sustained morale during the darkest days of the Revolutionary War. His Rights of Man (1791) defended the French Revolution against Edmund Burke’s attack, while The Age of Reason (1794–1807) challenged organized religion with deist arguments. Paine’s clear, vigorous prose style made complex political ideas accessible to ordinary readers and established the modern tradition of radical political pamphleteering.