Thomas Paine
British-American · 1737–1809
Paine is the most important popular writer in the freethought tradition. Where other Enlightenment thinkers addressed themselves to educated elites, Paine wrote for everyone — in clear, direct, unornamental prose that assumed his reader was intelligent and capable of following an argument. Common Sense, Rights of Man, and The Age of Reason together form the most sustained democratic and freethinking argument of the eighteenth century.
Thomas Paine was born in Thetford, Norfolk, England, the son of a Quaker corset maker. He emigrated to the American colonies in 1774, carrying a letter of introduction from Benjamin Franklin. Within two years he had written Common Sense, the pamphlet that made the case for American independence in language that ordinary people could read and be moved by.
Paine spent the Revolutionary War writing The Crisis papers, whose opening line — ‘These are the times that try men’s souls’ — Washington read aloud to his troops before the Battle of Trenton. After the war he returned to England, wrote Rights of Man in defence of the French Revolution, was charged with seditious libel, and fled to France where he was elected to the National Convention.
In 1794 he published The Age of Reason, a systematic critique of revealed religion that cost him nearly everything. He returned to America in 1802 to find himself vilified for his religious views. He died in 1809 in relative poverty. Six people attended his funeral.
Works in the Library
18th Century
The Age of Reason
Thomas Paine
A systematic critique of revealed religion that cost Paine his reputation and nearly his life — written while he awaited execution in a French prison.
18th Century
Common Sense
Thomas Paine
The pamphlet that argued for American independence with plain reason rather than legal precedent — and sold 500,000 copies in a population of three million.
Thomas Paine appears in the Map of Freethinkers.