Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine (29 January 1737 – 8 June 1809) was an English pamphleteer, revolutionary, inventor, and intellectual. Born in Norfolk, he lived and worked in Great Britain until he was 37, when he emigrated to the British North American colonies just before the American Revolution. A friend of Benjamin Franklin, his main contribution was the powerful,widely-read pamphlet Common Sense (1776),which promoted the idea of colonial America's independence from Great Britain. He also wrote The American Crisis (1776–1783), a series of pamphlets supporting the revolution.

Paine went to France after the American Revolution to join the French Revolution. In prison there, he wrote The Age of Reason, a pamphlet that was critical of organized religion. Paine, along with other American founders such as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, pererred to apply reason, instead of revelation, to religion. That was part of the greater Age of Enlightenment, a movement that had started around the 17th century.

Paine died at the age of 72 at 59 Grove Street in Greenwich Village, New York City, United States, on the morning of June 8, 1809.^[1]

• The Age of Reason
• ThomasPaine.org website