Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine (1737 CE–1809 CE) was an English-born American political activist, philosopher, and pamphleteer whose radical writings directly catalyzed the American and French Revolutions. Born into a working-class Quaker family in Thetford, England, Paine immigrated to the American colonies in 1774 CE with the assistance of Benjamin Franklin. In January 1776 CE, he published Common Sense, an anonymous pamphlet written in clear, forceful language that fundamentally transformed colonial public opinion by turning a tax revolt into an explicit demand for complete independence from the British monarchy. During the Revolutionary War, his American Crisis essays sustained continental military morale. Later, in Europe, he published Rights of Man (1791 CE) to defend the French Revolution against Edmund Burke, and The Age of Reason (1794 CE), a controversial critique of institutional religion and institutionalized Christian dogma.