Hon. Jonathan Bourne, Jr.: "Thomas Paine in England and America and
Thomas Jefferson in America became the chanticleers of liberty."
Hon. John J. Ingalls: "Paine was one of the great apostles of human
liberty, and did much to emancipate mankind from the shackles of ancient
prejudice and error."
"A warm friend to the liberty and lasting welfare of the human
race."--_Samuel Adams._
Prof. Lester F. Ward, LL.D.: "Thanks to Paine and other great reformers,
we have emerged from the condition where the political struggle is the
main issue. In other words political liberty has been attained."
T. J. Bowles, M. D.: "At the close of the eighteenth century it dawned
upon the minds of the immortal Paine, Jefferson and Franklin that all
men are created equal, and this conception born in the minds of this
trinity of saviors made the nineteenth century the most marvelous and
the happiest period in the history of the world."
Earl John Francis Stanley Russell: "A great reformer and an illustrious
heretical pioneer."
"His name stands for mental freedom and moral courage."--_George W.
Foote_.
"Thomas Paine was a heroic innovator. He said what he thought and he
meant what he said."--_Rev. George Burman Foster_.
John Wesley Jarvis: "He devoted his whole life to the attainment of two
objects--rights of man and freedom of conscience."
Prof. H. M. Kottinger, A. M.: "Thomas Paine fought as courageously for
religious liberty as he did for civil liberty."
"I dare not say how much of what our Union is owing and enjoying
to-day--its independence--its ardent belief in, and substantial practice
of, radical human rights--and the severance of its government from all
ecclesiastical and superstitious dominions--I dare not say how much of
all this is owing to Thomas Paine, but I am inclined to think a good
portion of it decidedly is."--_Walt. Whitman_.
"It was his clear head and brave and righteous soul that inspired the
men who declared our independence, and put into the Constitution of
the United States such a veto against ecclesiastical domination as has
defied its proud and conceited usurpation to the present day."--_Elizur
Wright_.
H. Lee-Warner: "Its [Thetford's] great man who taught the world to
respect the right of free-thought."
(The one hundredth anniversary of the death of Thomas Paine was observed
at his birthplace. The mayor of Thetford presided, and four members of
the British Parliament delivered eulogistic addresses.)
George Anderson: "One of the noblest Freethinkers in the world's
history.
"Paine is the idol of Freethinkers. He is enthroned in our hearts
because he gave his life to freedom."--_L. K. Washburn._
"In both worlds he offered his blood for the good of man. In the
wilderness of America, in the French Convention, in the sombre cell
awaiting death, he was the same unflinching, unwavering friend of his
race; the same undaunted champion of freedom."--_Ingersoll._
Martin L. Bunge: "I owe much to Thomas Paine. His words have guided me
in my struggle for liberty and truth. The more I study him the more I
love the human race."
Isador Ladoff: "Freethought was to him not a mere attitude of mind, but
a philosophy of life and action."
Prof. M. N. Wright: "He will always stand as an illustrious example of
that higher reverence, that diviner faith of the incoming religion--a
religion based in the common wants of a common humanity."
William Marion Reedy: "He glorified common sense.... He is one of the
chief saints of the Church of Man."
Rev. Paul Jordan Smith: "When Thomas Paine first saw the light of day it
was the custom of certain disciples of peace and good will to beat and
burn the man who wanted to think.... And down the days that since
have passed it has been the fashion of the blatant orthodox to cry,
'Infidel!' 'Infidel!' at the man who said: 'Any system of religion that
shocks the mind of a child cannot be a true system.' 'The world is my
country; to do good my religion.'"
Robert Blatchford: "Paine left Moses and Isaiah centuries behind when he
wrote: 'The world is my country; to do good my religion.'"
Stoughton Cooley: "One of the most devoted spirits in the cause of
liberty."
East Anglian Daily Times: "The Rights of Man' and the 'Age of Reason'
may have scandalized orthodox opinion, but their author was never
engaged in any but a generous and noble cause, that had complete
personal liberty for its sole object and aim."
"They [Lord Bolingbroke and Thomas Paine] were alike in making bitter
enemies of the priests and pharisees of their day. Both were honest men;
both advocates of human liberty."--_Thomas Jefferson._
J. C. Hannon: "Liberty, hunted around the globe, has ever found its
highest hope, its safest refuge, in the affections of those upon whose
grand and noble foreheads the tyrants of the world have ever branded
the indelible stigma of Infidelity. Thomas Paine, who has done more for
human liberty than any other man who ever lived, has borne it with a
grace amounting to sublimity."
Dr. J. B. Wilson: "Towering spires, blazing altars, jeweled palaces, and
golden thrones had awed and subdued the Eastern nations for all time.
It remained for Thomas Paine, standing upon the shores of this western
world, to tear away the blinds of superstition, hypocrisy, selfishness,
and imperial pretense, and awaken mankind to a consciousness of its own
power and capacity for self-government."
Walter Holloway: "Age after age men have struggled toward the ideal,
with toil and tears, praying in their pain, sobbing out their sorrows in
the half-light of hope, forever beaten back from the coveted goal. Wise
men long ago saw that the gods must be dethroned and the government
of earth given into the hands of men. That was the passionate dream of
Thomas Paine."
M. Felix Rabbe: "Thomas Paine has suffered the fate of all those who,
listening only to their conscience of honest manhood, solely attentive
to the voices of Nature and Reason, raised principles above all
considerations of frontiers, parties, sects, and sacrificed without
hesitation the mean calculations of a temporizing policy to the higher
interests of eternal justice."
"The world has had few such men, those who divest themselves of selfish
motives of gain or pride and are willing to suffer obloquy and poverty
for a conviction."--_Edward C. Wentworth_.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton.: "We cannot be too grateful to those who through
poverty, persecution, imprisonment, and death have given us the light
of science in the place of blind faith on questions of government,
religion, and social life. Thomas Paine is a worthy name in the long
line of martyrs to liberal political and religious principles."
"Poor, abused, maligned, hated and persecuted, Paine stood alone in the
ocean of superstition, ignorance and prejudice as the Liberty Statue
of religious thought while the waves of malice, ostracism and anathema
lashed against his kind and manly brow."--_Rev. David W. Bash._
Rev. Dr. Thomas Slicer: "The progress of the world in political and
religious liberty will be written in the estimates that the world has
learned to take of Thomas Paine during the hundred years since he fell
into an unnoticed grave."
"Thomas Paine made it impossible to write the history of human liberty
with his name left out. He was one of the creators of light. He was one
of the heralds of the dawn."--_Col. R. G. Ingersoll._
"I enjoy myself when I think how free I am, and I thank this man for it.
When I think of that the whole horizon is full of glory, and joy comes
to me in every ray of sunshine and every rustle of the winds."--_Ibid._
James F. Morton, Jr.:
"Since time began,
No greater prophet faced the savage ban
Of priest and king."
Rev. David W. Bush: "How unwise to deny myself the companionship of one
of the greatest, bravest, most self-sacrificing men of all time because
he has written things I cannot accept."
Pearl W. Geer: "This is the beauty of Free-thought--the glory of
Infidelity. We recognize good in everything where good is to be found.
While we do not accept all of Thomas Paine's ideas we recognize in him
the greatest man the world has ever known."
"There is not in Illinois a monument that stands as high as Abraham
Lincoln; nor in Massachusetts as high as Ralph Waldo Emerson; nor in the
world as high as Thomas Paine."--_L. K. Washburn_.
"The wisest, brightest, humblest son of earth."
--Clio Rickman.
Rev. George Croly: "An impartial estimate of this remarkable man has
been rarely formed and still more rarely expressed. He was assuredly one
of the original men of the age in which he lived."
Col. Charles Stedman (a Tory officer in the Revolution): "Thomas Paine
has rendered his name famous on the theatre of Europe and of the world."
Robert Shelton Mackenzie: "We cannot ignore the fact that he was one of
the ablest politicians of his time and that liberal minds all over the
world recognize him as such."
"Washington recognized his practical insight, Napoleon picked him out
from the crowd of 'ideaologues' and consulted him."--_London Times_.
William Cobbett, one of the most notable figures in English politics,
who, misled by Paine's enemies, had been one of his most violent
assailants, thus frankly acknowledges his indebtedness to him: "Old age
having laid his hand upon this truly great man, this truly philosophical
politician, at his expiring flambeau I lighted my taper."
Charles Bradlaugh: "He was a sturdy, true man. Though Norfolk born,
not English, but human, and with nothing of geographical limit to that
humanity. As a politician, or rather as a thinker on politics he stands
for England as Jean Jacques Rousseau has stood for France. You on your
side ought to reverence him for the timely words which gave form and
reality to vague, unspoken thought. We, on our side, too, ought to honor
him for the 'Rights of Man' yet to be wearisomely achieved."
Atlantic Monthly: (July, 1859): "His career was wonderful, even for the
age of miraculous events he lived in. In America he was a Revolutionary
hero of the first rank, who carried letters in his pocket from George
Washington, thanking him for his services. And he managed besides to
write his radical name in large letters in the History of England and
France."
W. W. Bartlett: "He was undeniably preeminent among statesmen, and by
his many-sidedness he succeeded in rousing the whole civilized world."
Marshall J. Gauvin: "In honoring the memory of Thomas Paine we recognize
and salute one of the greatest forces in history."
"Other men have followed events; Paine actually created them.... he
wanted a Declaration of Independence, and he produced the wish for
it."--_Gilbert Vale._
Hugh Byron Brown: "There are a few great men who, like milestones along
the road of progress, are so distinguished and prominent, and who have
so influenced the destinies of nations, as to mark an epoch in the
world's history. Such a man was Thomas Paine."