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Common Sense and Selected Works of Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine is one of history’s most renowned thinkers and was indispensible to both the American and French revolutions. The three works included, Common Sense, The Rights of Man, and The Age of Reason, are among his most famous publications. Paine is probably best known for his hugely popular pamphlet, Common Sense, which swayed public opinion in favor of American independence from England. The Rights of Man and The Age of Reason further advocated for universal human rights, a republican instead of monarchical government, and truth and reason in politics. The works of this moral visionary, whose ideas are as relevant today as ever, are now available as part of the Word Cloud Classics series, providing a stylish and affordable addition to any library.
472 pages, Flexibound
First published May 6, 2014
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About the author
Thomas Paine
1,481 books1,838 followersThomas Paine was an English-American political activist, author, political theorist and revolutionary. As the author of two highly influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution, he inspired the Patriots in 1776 to declare independence from Britain. His ideas reflected Enlightenment-era rhetoric of transnational human rights. He has been called "a corset maker by trade, a journalist by profession, and a propagandist by inclination".
Born in Thetford, England, in the county of Norfolk, Paine emigrated to the British American colonies in 1774 with the help of Benjamin Franklin, arriving just in time to participate in the American Revolution. His principal contributions were the powerful, widely read pamphlet Common Sense (1776), the all-time best-selling American book that advocated colonial America's independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain, and The American Crisis (1776–83), a pro-revolutionary pamphlet series. Common Sense was so influential that John Adams said, "Without the pen of the author of Common Sense, the sword of Washington would have been raised in vain."
Paine lived in France for most of the 1790s, becoming deeply involved in the French Revolution. He wrote the Rights of Man (1791), in part a defence of the French Revolution against its critics. His attacks on British writer Edmund Burke led to a trial and conviction in absentia in 1792 for the crime of seditious libel. In 1792, despite not being able to speak French, he was elected to the French National Convention. The Girondists regarded him as an ally. Consequently, the Montagnards, especially Robespierre, regarded him as an enemy.
In December 1793, he was arrested and imprisoned in Paris, then released in 1794. He became notorious because of his pamphlet The Age of Reason (1793–94), in which he advocated deism, promoted reason and freethinking, and argued against institutionalized religion in general and Christian doctrine in particular. He also wrote the pamphlet Agrarian Justice (1795), discussing the origins of property, and introduced the concept of a guaranteed minimum income. In 1802, he returned to America where he died on June 8, 1809. Only six people attended his funeral as he had been ostracized for his ridicule of Christianity.
Born in Thetford, England, in the county of Norfolk, Paine emigrated to the British American colonies in 1774 with the help of Benjamin Franklin, arriving just in time to participate in the American Revolution. His principal contributions were the powerful, widely read pamphlet Common Sense (1776), the all-time best-selling American book that advocated colonial America's independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain, and The American Crisis (1776–83), a pro-revolutionary pamphlet series. Common Sense was so influential that John Adams said, "Without the pen of the author of Common Sense, the sword of Washington would have been raised in vain."
Paine lived in France for most of the 1790s, becoming deeply involved in the French Revolution. He wrote the Rights of Man (1791), in part a defence of the French Revolution against its critics. His attacks on British writer Edmund Burke led to a trial and conviction in absentia in 1792 for the crime of seditious libel. In 1792, despite not being able to speak French, he was elected to the French National Convention. The Girondists regarded him as an ally. Consequently, the Montagnards, especially Robespierre, regarded him as an enemy.
In December 1793, he was arrested and imprisoned in Paris, then released in 1794. He became notorious because of his pamphlet The Age of Reason (1793–94), in which he advocated deism, promoted reason and freethinking, and argued against institutionalized religion in general and Christian doctrine in particular. He also wrote the pamphlet Agrarian Justice (1795), discussing the origins of property, and introduced the concept of a guaranteed minimum income. In 1802, he returned to America where he died on June 8, 1809. Only six people attended his funeral as he had been ostracized for his ridicule of Christianity.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 23, 2016
The huge amount of intellectual maturity and humanity in Thomas Paine is quite astounding, a true symbol of the Enlightenment.
So this selection groups three different works distributed in five books: Common Sense, Rights of Man I and II, and Age of Reason I and II. So about half of this particular selection is exclusively about politics and the latter half about religion.
In most of this review I won't really give much opinion, I think it is much more worth it to talk of some of the author's own discussions in these books and provide some fragments, for nothing will convince someone to read any of these but Paine himself, I think.
Common Sense (1776), a short pamphlet, deals with the prospect of revolution in America, its justification, and why Britain has lost its way. His message is very clear and crude, he tries to cover many opinions and provide appropriate refutation.
"But Britain is the parent country, say some. Then the more shame upon her conduct. Even brutes do not devour their young, nor savages make war upon their families; wherefore the assertion, if true, turns to her reproach; but it happens not to be true, or only partly so and the phrase parent or mother country hath been jesuitically adopted by the King and his parasites, with a low papistical design of gaining unfair bias on the credulous weakness of our minds." (p. 21)
He considers himself American too, while being born in England, but it is worth to note his cosmopolitan attitude, because in the end he sees the American cause as the cause of liberty of the world.
"Instead of gazing at each other with suspicious or doubtful curiosity, let each of us, hold out to his neighbour the hearty hand of friendship, and unite in drawing a line, which, like an act of oblivion shall bury in forgetfulness every former dissension. Let the names of Whig and Tory be extinct; and let none other be heard among us, than those of a good citizen, an open and resolute friend, and a virtuous supporter of the RIGHTS of MANKIND and of the FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES OF AMERICA. " (p. 51)
In Rights of Man (1791), a longer and more methodical book than Common Sense, Paine discusses primarily the French Revolution and its criticisms, drawing from the American experience and also answering particular persons, such as Edmund Burke. At some point he even summarizes the way the revolution starts.
"Man did not enter into society to become worse than he was before, nor to have fewer rights than he had before, but to have those rights better secured." (p. 97)
One of his main points of attack is against the idea of hereditary governments, and by that attacking monarchy:
"All hereditary government is in its nature tyranny. An heritable crown, or an heritable throne, or by what other fanciful name such things may be called, have no other significant explanation than that mankind are heritable property. To inherit a government, is to inherit the people, as if they were flocks and herds." (p. 191)
And being active in both of the revolutions in America and France, Paine was quite influential and a symbol of what it meant to stand up for these new principles and change the world. He is eventually persecuted, and is condemned in England for his seditious texts, therefore not being able to return to Britain.
Sometimes his analysis is very particular and detailed. At one point he discusses the finances of Britain, and determines a particular quantity of government surplus that, instead of making the government grow more, should instead be used to give money away to people in need. He makes all the math and shows how it is efficient and how it might contribute to the development of the nation. This is why some people see Paine, although a figure of the Enlightenment and therefore a capitalistic form of government, also as a person in favor of a kind of welfare state. Although he makes it clear that it is not charity because those people in need pay a lot of taxes and deserve to get some back in particular cases such as poverty or old age. His focus is quite simple and humane, since he simply wants to reduce suffering and help people learn more about living instead of oppression. Paine has a kind of refreshing and optimistic view of what being a human is.
"It would be better that nations should continue the pay of their soldiers during their lives, and give them their discharge and restore them to freedom and their friends, and cease recruiting, than retain such multitudes at the same expense, in a condition useless to society and to themselves." (p. 278)
Age of Reason (1792) is quite strong criticism of religious institutions, primarily of the Christian church. It is very strong particularly for the time, but Paine saw the political revolutions occurring as part of larger change in human affairs, one including stepping away from oppressive and false religions.
"Soon after I had published the pamphlet Common Sense, in America, I saw the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion." (p. 308)
Thomas Paine analyses the ideas and doctrines of Christianity, and through its criticisms he proposes following a deistic point of view, for he makes it clear that he is not an atheist, but a deist--namely, a single and unique god exists, but he has not made any contact with humanity, he basically shows himself through creation and nothing else. He is very opposed to Christianity and its religious texts:
"Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness,with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my own part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel." (p. 321)
The particular idea to get from his deism is, and this is why it is so closely tied to the times, is that by arguing that god is manifested in nature (in creation, not that god is nature), it is only through its study that we learn from this deity--by science. Because otherwise, through religious and sacred texts, he argues that it is impossible to get a revelation, because human language, being alterable, is unfit to transmit the message of god. He explains:
"It is only in the creation that all our ideas and conceptions of a word of God can unite. The Creation speaketh an universal language, independently of human speech or human language, multiplied and various as they be. It is an ever existing original, which every man can read. It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed. It does not depend upon the will of man whether it shall be published or not; it publishes itself from one end of the earth to the other. It preaches to all nations and to all worlds; and this word of God reveals to man all that is necessary for man to know of God." (p.331)
So his religious views, in a way, unite with science. Only through understanding the world, the universe, we get to god. Although he also points to some idea of moral intuition, as he says there are things that we innately judge as wrong, and that must signal to a creator. This last point quite influential considering that is a very similar idea to Kant's own statements on "the moral law within." Possibly being Paine's influence since Kant was well read on the writings on the revolutions.
Another interesting thing is a very similar point Paine makes to one originally made by David Hume. One famous fragment of Hume talks about the probability of miracles to happen as against the probability of a man to be lying or that the laws of nature to fail. Paine puts it thus:
"If we are to suppose a miracle to be something so entirely out of the course of what is called nature, that she must go out of that course to accomplish it, and we see an account given of such a miracle by the person who said he saw it, it rises a question in the mind very easily decided, which is—Is it more probable that nature should go out of her course, or that a man should tell a lie? We have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course; but we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told in that same time; it is, therefore, at least millions to one, that the reporter of a miracle tells a lie." (p. 362-363)
Paine eventually takes the actual books in the Bible and analyses them and demonstrates all the inconsistencies and contradictions with the idea of showing how unreliable it is.
"Having now shown that every book in the Bible, from Genesis to Judges, is without authenticity, I come to the book of Ruth, an idle, bungling story, foolishly told, nobody knows by whom, about a strolling country-girl creeping slily to bed to her cousin Boaz. Pretty stuff indeed to be called the word of God. It is, however, one of the best books in the Bible, for it is free from murder and rapine." (392-393)
He also proposes a theory that the word prophet as used in the Bible actually means poet. To this he makes some points as: there is no mention of the word "poet" or "poetry" in the Bible although they use and talk about poets; this is done when speaking of prophets; he also provides instances in which the Bible points at companies of prophets with musical instruments, and other prophets joining. Meaning, he says, that the Bible confuses (possibly willingly) poetry with prophecy--also pointing that prophets from different nations gave contradictory prophecies, each supporting their own nation (pointing maybe as poetry meant to exalt emotions and fulfill the imagery).
About the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, which he analyses each, Paine says:
"Now, if the writers of these four books had gone into a court of justice to prove an alibi, (for it is of the nature of an alibi that is here attempted to be proved, namely, the absence of a dead body by supernatural means,) and had they given their evidence in the same contradictory manner as it is here given, they would have been in danger of having their ears crop for perjury, and would have justly deserved it. Yet this is the evidence, and these are the books, that have been imposed upon the world as being given by divine inspiration, and as the unchangeable word of God." (p. 436)
His own views could be summarized by this fragment:
"I totally disbelieve that the Almighty ever did communicate any thing to man, by any mode of speech, in any language, or by any kind of vision, or appearance, or by any means which our senses are capable of receiving, otherwise than by the universal display of himself in the works of the creation, and by the repugnance we feel in ourselves to bad actions, and disposition to good ones." (p. 454)
So to conclude, it was a very fascinating read. His views are very interesting and well argued. By reading these main works one gets exactly why Thomas Paine is one of the greatest figures of the Enlightenment. His influence is immense, and his principles not at all affected by the passing of time.
So this selection groups three different works distributed in five books: Common Sense, Rights of Man I and II, and Age of Reason I and II. So about half of this particular selection is exclusively about politics and the latter half about religion.
In most of this review I won't really give much opinion, I think it is much more worth it to talk of some of the author's own discussions in these books and provide some fragments, for nothing will convince someone to read any of these but Paine himself, I think.
Common Sense (1776), a short pamphlet, deals with the prospect of revolution in America, its justification, and why Britain has lost its way. His message is very clear and crude, he tries to cover many opinions and provide appropriate refutation.
"But Britain is the parent country, say some. Then the more shame upon her conduct. Even brutes do not devour their young, nor savages make war upon their families; wherefore the assertion, if true, turns to her reproach; but it happens not to be true, or only partly so and the phrase parent or mother country hath been jesuitically adopted by the King and his parasites, with a low papistical design of gaining unfair bias on the credulous weakness of our minds." (p. 21)
He considers himself American too, while being born in England, but it is worth to note his cosmopolitan attitude, because in the end he sees the American cause as the cause of liberty of the world.
"Instead of gazing at each other with suspicious or doubtful curiosity, let each of us, hold out to his neighbour the hearty hand of friendship, and unite in drawing a line, which, like an act of oblivion shall bury in forgetfulness every former dissension. Let the names of Whig and Tory be extinct; and let none other be heard among us, than those of a good citizen, an open and resolute friend, and a virtuous supporter of the RIGHTS of MANKIND and of the FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES OF AMERICA. " (p. 51)
In Rights of Man (1791), a longer and more methodical book than Common Sense, Paine discusses primarily the French Revolution and its criticisms, drawing from the American experience and also answering particular persons, such as Edmund Burke. At some point he even summarizes the way the revolution starts.
"Man did not enter into society to become worse than he was before, nor to have fewer rights than he had before, but to have those rights better secured." (p. 97)
One of his main points of attack is against the idea of hereditary governments, and by that attacking monarchy:
"All hereditary government is in its nature tyranny. An heritable crown, or an heritable throne, or by what other fanciful name such things may be called, have no other significant explanation than that mankind are heritable property. To inherit a government, is to inherit the people, as if they were flocks and herds." (p. 191)
And being active in both of the revolutions in America and France, Paine was quite influential and a symbol of what it meant to stand up for these new principles and change the world. He is eventually persecuted, and is condemned in England for his seditious texts, therefore not being able to return to Britain.
Sometimes his analysis is very particular and detailed. At one point he discusses the finances of Britain, and determines a particular quantity of government surplus that, instead of making the government grow more, should instead be used to give money away to people in need. He makes all the math and shows how it is efficient and how it might contribute to the development of the nation. This is why some people see Paine, although a figure of the Enlightenment and therefore a capitalistic form of government, also as a person in favor of a kind of welfare state. Although he makes it clear that it is not charity because those people in need pay a lot of taxes and deserve to get some back in particular cases such as poverty or old age. His focus is quite simple and humane, since he simply wants to reduce suffering and help people learn more about living instead of oppression. Paine has a kind of refreshing and optimistic view of what being a human is.
"It would be better that nations should continue the pay of their soldiers during their lives, and give them their discharge and restore them to freedom and their friends, and cease recruiting, than retain such multitudes at the same expense, in a condition useless to society and to themselves." (p. 278)
Age of Reason (1792) is quite strong criticism of religious institutions, primarily of the Christian church. It is very strong particularly for the time, but Paine saw the political revolutions occurring as part of larger change in human affairs, one including stepping away from oppressive and false religions.
"Soon after I had published the pamphlet Common Sense, in America, I saw the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion." (p. 308)
Thomas Paine analyses the ideas and doctrines of Christianity, and through its criticisms he proposes following a deistic point of view, for he makes it clear that he is not an atheist, but a deist--namely, a single and unique god exists, but he has not made any contact with humanity, he basically shows himself through creation and nothing else. He is very opposed to Christianity and its religious texts:
"Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness,with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my own part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel." (p. 321)
The particular idea to get from his deism is, and this is why it is so closely tied to the times, is that by arguing that god is manifested in nature (in creation, not that god is nature), it is only through its study that we learn from this deity--by science. Because otherwise, through religious and sacred texts, he argues that it is impossible to get a revelation, because human language, being alterable, is unfit to transmit the message of god. He explains:
"It is only in the creation that all our ideas and conceptions of a word of God can unite. The Creation speaketh an universal language, independently of human speech or human language, multiplied and various as they be. It is an ever existing original, which every man can read. It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed. It does not depend upon the will of man whether it shall be published or not; it publishes itself from one end of the earth to the other. It preaches to all nations and to all worlds; and this word of God reveals to man all that is necessary for man to know of God." (p.331)
So his religious views, in a way, unite with science. Only through understanding the world, the universe, we get to god. Although he also points to some idea of moral intuition, as he says there are things that we innately judge as wrong, and that must signal to a creator. This last point quite influential considering that is a very similar idea to Kant's own statements on "the moral law within." Possibly being Paine's influence since Kant was well read on the writings on the revolutions.
Another interesting thing is a very similar point Paine makes to one originally made by David Hume. One famous fragment of Hume talks about the probability of miracles to happen as against the probability of a man to be lying or that the laws of nature to fail. Paine puts it thus:
"If we are to suppose a miracle to be something so entirely out of the course of what is called nature, that she must go out of that course to accomplish it, and we see an account given of such a miracle by the person who said he saw it, it rises a question in the mind very easily decided, which is—Is it more probable that nature should go out of her course, or that a man should tell a lie? We have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course; but we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told in that same time; it is, therefore, at least millions to one, that the reporter of a miracle tells a lie." (p. 362-363)
Paine eventually takes the actual books in the Bible and analyses them and demonstrates all the inconsistencies and contradictions with the idea of showing how unreliable it is.
"Having now shown that every book in the Bible, from Genesis to Judges, is without authenticity, I come to the book of Ruth, an idle, bungling story, foolishly told, nobody knows by whom, about a strolling country-girl creeping slily to bed to her cousin Boaz. Pretty stuff indeed to be called the word of God. It is, however, one of the best books in the Bible, for it is free from murder and rapine." (392-393)
He also proposes a theory that the word prophet as used in the Bible actually means poet. To this he makes some points as: there is no mention of the word "poet" or "poetry" in the Bible although they use and talk about poets; this is done when speaking of prophets; he also provides instances in which the Bible points at companies of prophets with musical instruments, and other prophets joining. Meaning, he says, that the Bible confuses (possibly willingly) poetry with prophecy--also pointing that prophets from different nations gave contradictory prophecies, each supporting their own nation (pointing maybe as poetry meant to exalt emotions and fulfill the imagery).
About the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, which he analyses each, Paine says:
"Now, if the writers of these four books had gone into a court of justice to prove an alibi, (for it is of the nature of an alibi that is here attempted to be proved, namely, the absence of a dead body by supernatural means,) and had they given their evidence in the same contradictory manner as it is here given, they would have been in danger of having their ears crop for perjury, and would have justly deserved it. Yet this is the evidence, and these are the books, that have been imposed upon the world as being given by divine inspiration, and as the unchangeable word of God." (p. 436)
His own views could be summarized by this fragment:
"I totally disbelieve that the Almighty ever did communicate any thing to man, by any mode of speech, in any language, or by any kind of vision, or appearance, or by any means which our senses are capable of receiving, otherwise than by the universal display of himself in the works of the creation, and by the repugnance we feel in ourselves to bad actions, and disposition to good ones." (p. 454)
So to conclude, it was a very fascinating read. His views are very interesting and well argued. By reading these main works one gets exactly why Thomas Paine is one of the greatest figures of the Enlightenment. His influence is immense, and his principles not at all affected by the passing of time.
September 1, 2022
What a Paine in the neck this was. The collection starts off good with Common Sense, which is an excellent piece on the formation of government and the necessity (or inevitability) of American independence. And then comes the Rights of Man. It has some nice nuggets of ideas and philosophy here and there, and it does provide some history around the French Revolution, but oh my GOSH does it drag. The first part is almost completely dedicated to dunking on one of his contemporaries, with little the second half could do to salvage my interest. It just rambles too much, and there's only so much "conciseness" that I can take. I got through about 200 pages before deciding I've had enough. I will continue reading his other works from a different collection.
Meh; would recommend reading a more condensed version or selections from the works rather than the whole thing unless you're just REALLY committed
Meh; would recommend reading a more condensed version or selections from the works rather than the whole thing unless you're just REALLY committed
October 11, 2025
This starts off promising, but really fell flat towards the end.
February 28, 2016
Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" started out really strong with political philosophy and ideology so prominent in every word he wrote. The struggle between hereditary ruling versus representative governments was vivid and a fascinating read. The tax system and how distributive justice should be applied within the systems, especially after a Revolution had occurred, was all the more interesting especially for an Economist like myself. Thomas Paine was brilliant despite him being a bit over repetitive and lingering on some parts that should have taken a couple of pages instead of two chapters.
However, he lost me in the second part of the book entitled "The Age of Reason". I thought it would be a part about how one should think correctly when it comes to politics and the way systems work instead, he turned it into how religion should be conceived and how the Prophets of the Past are but murderers and brutal and that religion was spread by the Sword just because the dates in which a few books were written or historical events were mentioned were incorrect. I totally respect his view on religion but I nearly had to skip the last few chapters because all I was reading was someone just negating everything religious books were saying just because their history wasn't correct or because the authors weren't mentioned or because it does not sound like the Word of God.
I am all for criticism and I am all for other people entitled to their own opinion but the second part of the book was seriously a waste of precious time and pages.
However, he lost me in the second part of the book entitled "The Age of Reason". I thought it would be a part about how one should think correctly when it comes to politics and the way systems work instead, he turned it into how religion should be conceived and how the Prophets of the Past are but murderers and brutal and that religion was spread by the Sword just because the dates in which a few books were written or historical events were mentioned were incorrect. I totally respect his view on religion but I nearly had to skip the last few chapters because all I was reading was someone just negating everything religious books were saying just because their history wasn't correct or because the authors weren't mentioned or because it does not sound like the Word of God.
I am all for criticism and I am all for other people entitled to their own opinion but the second part of the book was seriously a waste of precious time and pages.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews