Published in 1776, Thomas Paine's influential pamphlet made a compelling philosophical case for American independence from British rule. Paine argued that common people possessed the reasoning ability to govern themselves, challenging both monarchy and the complexity of British government through accessible prose that reached colonists across social classes.
Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason. As a long and violent abuse of power, is generally the Means of calling the right of it in question (and in Matters too which might never have been thought of, had not the Sufferers been aggravated into the inquiry) and as the King of England hath undertaken in his own Right, to support the Parliament in what he calls Theirs, and as the good people of this country are grievously oppressed by the combination, they have an undoubted privilege to inquire into the pretensions of both, and equally to reject the usurpation of either. In the following …Continue reading →
A radical English-American writer and philosopher (1737-1809) whose fiery pamphlet "Common Sense" ignited the American Revolution by convincing colonists that independence from Britain was both necessary and achievable. His passionate, accessible prose transformed political thought and helped birth a nation founded on democratic ideals and individual rights. All works by Thomas Paine →
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