Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine was an English-born American political activist, philosopher, political theorist, and revolutionary. He authored Common Sense and The American Crisis , the two most influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution, and helped inspire the patriots in 1776 to declare independence from Great Britain. His ideas reflected Enlightenment-era ideals of transnational human rights. Historian Saul K. Padover described him as “a corsetmaker by trade, a journalist by profession, and a propagandist by inclination”.