Thomas Paine

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.