Common Sense

The pamphlet that made independence thinkable to ordinary people, because Paine wrote the way they spoke and aimed straight at the idea that some men are born to rule others. It sold in numbers no American text had reached, and it changed minds at the scale a revolution needs. Plain prose, here, is a political weapon. Paine proved that the argument for self-government is strongest when anyone can follow it.

The corset-maker's son who arrived in America at thirty-seven and within two years wrote the pamphlet that made a revolution thinkable to ordinary people. Common Sense sold in numbers no American text had reached, because Paine wrote the way people spoke, and aimed his plain prose straight at the idea that some men are born to rule others. He later defended the French Revolution in Rights of Man and was tried for it. He wrote as a citizen of the world before the phrase was common.