Happy Birthday, Thomas Paine

Born February 9, 1737, Thetford, England | Died June 8, 1809, New York, NY

“We have it in our power to begin the world over again.”

Today, the Best American Essays newsletter celebrates inventor, essayist, and political philosopher Thomas Paine, on the 288th anniversary of his birth. Paine’s essay Common Sense (1776), signed anonymously by “an Englishman,” one of the most widely read pamphlets of the era—printed over half a million times—was a passionate plea for independence that coalesced sentiment for the American Revolution.

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Portrait of Thomas Paine, Laurent Dabos, 1792.

“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: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.”

Portrait of Thomas Paine by John Wesley Jarvis, circa 1806-1807.

“It has always been the opinion of the learned and curious, that a magazine, when properly conducted, is the nursery of genius; and by constantly accumulating new matter, becomes a kind of market for wit and utility.”

“Common Sense” (1776), a political essay that advocated independence from the British monarchy, is Thomas Paine’s most famous work. Rights of Man (1791), a book of essays, supports the French Revolution, positing that political revolution is permissible when a government does not safeguard the rights of its people. The Age of Reason (1794) challenges institutional religion and the legitimacy of the Bible.

First published essay:

Although “African Slavery in America” (Postscript to the Pennsylvania Journal and the Weekly Advertiser, 1775) is sometimes credited as Paine’s first published essay, the Thomas Paine National Historical Association argues it was not. The first essay of Paine’s published in Pennsylvania Magazine (1775) was “The Magazine in America.”

Select nonfiction bibliography:

Thomas Paine: Collected Writings, edited by Eric Foner, Library of America, 1995.

See also:

Visit The Thomas Paine National Historical Association.

Visit The Thomas Paine Society.

Watch To Begin the World Over Again: The Life of Thomas Paine, Ruskin Productions, 2019.

Watch Panel Discussion on Thomas Paine, featuring Chris Hedges, Cornell West, and Richard Wolff, C-Span, 2014.

Watch The Writings of Thomas Paine, C-Span, 2001.