"The two men who have left the richest heritage of thought and made the
deepest imprint upon the minds of mankind for future ages,... Thomas
Paine and Charles Darwin [Darwin was born in the year that Paine
died], were in turn the Elijah and the Elisha of the eighteenth and the
nineteenth centuries of the Christian era. One hundred years ago today
Thomas Paine let fall his mantle of light upon the infant shoulders of
Charles Darwin and vanished in a chariot of fire that shall blaze
the trail of the seeker after truth from generation unto
generation."--_Alden Freeman_.
Edward G Wentworth: "Giordano Bruno was one of the world's martyrs who
died for a cause. Thomas Paine was one of the world's martyrs who lived
for a cause. Each has created an imperishable name."
George Jacob Holyoake: "Paine was the most intrepid and influential
Englishman that ever sprang from the ranks of the people."
"The man who was the confidant of Burke, the counsellor of Franklin, and
the friend and colleague of Washington, must have had great qualities."
"He belongs to England. His fame is the property of England; and if no
other people will show that they value that fame, the people of England
will:"--_William Cobbett_.
Rev. J. Lloyd Jones, LL. D.: "Great souls are the key-stones in the
arches that unite the races.... German provincialism died when Lessing,
Schiller, and Goethe were born. The insignificant island lost its
insular character when Shakespeare wrote. The emaciated thirteen
colonies became great when Washington, Franklin, Paine, and Jefferson
spoke for them."
Mohammed Ali Webb: "All educated Mohammedans know him. The intelligent
Moslem places Thomas Paine among the world's admirable men and holds his
memory in great reverence."
U. Dhammaloka: "The Buddhist Tract Society of Burmah observed the
one hundreth anniversary of the death of Thomas Paine. We had large
audiences. I myself [president of this society] spoke to an audience of
about five thousand at a town in Upper Burmah."
Kedàrnath Basu (of India): "My countrymen are beginning to admire and
revere the noble character of Thomas Paine."
Yoshiro Oyama (Japan): "Thomas Paine was one of the greatest of the
great men of the world."
Francois Thane: "The French people would be proud to have his ashes rest
in the Pantheon beside the grave of Voltaire."
George Legg Henderson: "The time is not far distant when all the world
will recognize in Thomas Paine the martyr, the hero, the man."
Prof. A. L. Rawson, LL. D.: "More men like Paine are wanted, and will
appear from time to time, until the whole human race has grown in
intelligence, reason and taste."
Judge Arnold Krekel, LL. D.: "Let us carry forward, then, the work in
which the man we honor was so largely and so successfully engaged."
Libby C. Macdonald: "The lips of Thomas Paine are still in death, but we
can voice his principles through ours."
"I commend the study of the life of Paine to the young men of
today."--_Hon. William J. Gaynor._
"Time will come when the problem of school education will be how to make
good citizens of our boys and girls, and there are no better books for
this purpose than those of Thomas Paine."--_John S. Crosby._
"With the spirit of Thomas Paine in our hearts no despot, foreign or
domestic, will ever be able to build his throne beside the grave of our
liberty."--_Rev. Thomas B. Gregory._
"Had the world but heeded the wise counsels of Thomas Paine, Europe
would not now be drenched in blood."--_W. M. van der Weyde._
Rev. J. Page Hopps: "Paine was a splendid radical prophet, and
therefore, though a thoroughly practical man, was only a teacher and
leader born too soon."
Rev. Marie J. Howe: "Paine did not belong to the eighteenth century, but
was only born in it. He belongs to this."
Clarence Darrow: "Thomas Paine was so far beyond his age that a hundred
years has not been long enough for the world to catch up. Sometime he
will stand out as the wisest, truest, bravest friend of liberty that
America can boast."
Henry Gaylord Wilshire: "Paine was the greatest man this country has
produced, and it is only a question of time when we will come to realize
it."
"Paine, being a genius, saw a vision of the future and the glories that
should be. The herd did not, and we do not, but we shall some day."
Rev. Robert J. Lockhart: "He was a light that shed a splendor whose
origin no man could declare. He was greater than the times he lived in."
Horace J. Bridges: "Some men are too great and too far ahead of
their times to get justice at contemporary hands. Being too broad
and impartial for any single party, they offend all parties, and are
rejected and reviled by all. Such in England was the fate of Cromwell
and Milton; and such in America has been the fate of Paine."
Herbert N. Casson: "Paine was a man who did not belong to his time, a
man who was far larger than the men among whom he lived. He was loaned,
as it were, from a larger planet to this small one. And he was given to
this country at a time when the country most needed a guide and a wise
teacher in the cause of independence and truth."
Rev. Dwight Galloupe, U. S. A.: "I am proud to speak the name of one
who, in too many memories, lives only as an outcast and Ishmael among
men--Thomas Paine. I cannot forget that when all was dark his eye saw
a star of hope, his faith heard the tramping of millions of free people
yet unborn. His devotion kept him steadfast until the Stars and Stripes
compelled the recognition of the world."
"The man whose eloquent and reasoned appeal, 'Common Sense,' first
formulated the demand for Independence, the first coiner of the great
thought and expression, 'The United States of America,' the man whom
Washington and Jefferson were proud to call their friend, and whose
magnificent work for the liberty of their country they acknowledged with
unstinted praise."--_The Nation_.
George Washington: "That his 'Common Sense' and many of his 'Crisis'
were well timed and had a happy effect on the public mind, none, I
believe, who will turn to the epochs at which they were published will
deny."
"Must the merits of Common Sense continue to glide down the stream
of time unrewarded by his country? His writings certainly have had a
powerful effect on the public mind,--ought they not then to meet an
adequate return?"
"If you will come to this place and partake with me I shall be
exceedingly glad to see you at it. Your presence may remind Congress of
your past services to this country; and if it is in my power to impress
them, command my best exertions with freedom, as they will be rendered
cheerfully by one who entertains a lively sense of the importance of
your works."
"I am in hopes you will find us returned generally to sentiments worthy
of former [Revolutionary] times. In these it will be your glory to have
steadily labored, and with as much effect as any man living."--_Thomas
Jefferson_.
Colonel John Laurens: "You will be received with open arms, and all that
affection and respect which our citizens are anxious to testify to the
author of 'Common Sense' and the 'Crisis.'"
"I wish you to regard this part of America [the Carolinas] as your
particular home--and every thing that I can command in it to be in
common between us."
Robert Emmett: "To be associated with Mr. Paine, whose services to
America are reflected in the glory of her Republic and the happiness
of her people, must be to any one who loves liberty, or regards private
virtues and public accomplishments, a source of peculiar pride."
James Monroe: "The citizens of the United States cannot look back upon
the times of their own Revolution without recollecting among the names
of their most distinguished patriots that of Thomas Paine. The services
he rendered to his country in its struggle for freedom have implanted in
the hearts of his countrymen a sense of gratitude never to be effaced as
long as they deserve the title of a just and generous people."
"The crime of ingratitude has not yet stained, and I trust never will
stain our national character. You are considered by them as not only
having rendered an important service in our Revolution, but as being on
a more extensive scale, the friend of human rights, and a distinguished
and able advocate in favor of public liberty."
James Madison (to Washington): "Whether a greater disposition to reward
patriotic and distinguished efforts of genius will be found on any
succeeding occasion, is not for me to predetermine. Should it
finally appear that the merits of the man whose writings have so much
contributed to infuse and foster the spirit of independence in the
people of America, are unable to inspire them with a just beneficence,
the world, it is to be feared, will give us as little credit for our
policy as for our gratitude in this particular."
Madison, Jefferson, Edmund Randolph, and others urged the appointment of
Paine to a place in Washington's cabinet.
"A little less modesty, a little more preference of himself to humanity,
and a good deal more of what ought to be common sense on the part of the
people he sought to free, and he would have been President of the United
States."--_Calvin Blanchard_.
Marquis de Lafayette: "To me America without her Thomas Paine is
unthinkable."
Should you ever visit Mount Vernon you will see among the many
interesting relics preserved there a key. It is the Key of the Bastille,
the demolition of which, on the 14th of July, 1789, was France's
Declaration of Independence. This key passed through the hands of three
celebrated men and associates in the mind the world's two greatest
revolutions. Its history, briefly stated, is as follows: "Jefferson
[then Minister to France] had sailed [for America] in September,
and Paine was recognized by Lafayette and other leaders as the
representative of the United States. To Paine Lafayette gave for
presentation to Washington the key of the destroyed Bastille, ever since
visible at Mount Vernon--symbol of the fact that, in Paine's words, 'the
principles of America opened the Bastille.'"--_Conway_.
Dr. J. Rudis-Jicinsky: "When, in Germany, I read for the first time
Paine's 'Common Sense' I thought that in the land of liberty, the United
States, this hero who upheld the cause of the Colonies must be glorified
and his works known to every patriotic citizen... To my astonishment I
found that in this country the name of this great writer was not even
known to all its citizens. Then a flood of light flashed through my
brain and by its rays I spelled the word 'Ingratitude.'"
Unknown Writer (written in an old volume of Paine's works in a
Philadelphia library): "He has no name. The country for which he labored
and suffered knows him not. His ashes rest in a foreign land. A rough
grass-grown mound, from which the bones have been purloined [now
surmounted by a handsome monument] is all that remains on the continent
of America to tell of the hero, the statesman, and the friend of man."
Rev. John Snyder of St. Louis says: "Paine is one of his country's
half-forgotten saviors. In the mind of that country his heresy has
canceled the years of loving and priceless service he rendered to
a new-born nation. The clamor of bigotry has drowned the voice of
gratitude."
"His patriotism shows not the slightest stain, and yet children have
been taught to abhor his name."--_Ibid._
"The highest monument of injustice on this earth is America's
ingratitude to Thomas Paine."--_James P. Bland, B.D._
"It is time the world awakened to his merits."--_Ella Wheeler Wilcox._
"It is time that justice should be done the memory of the man who strove
and suffered for his fellowmen."--_William Marion Reedy_.
"The Republic owes so much to him that it is hardly seemly that it
should continue doing less than justice to his memory."--_New York
World._
Hon. Henry S. Randall: "Concede all the allegations against him and it
still leaves him the author of 'Common Sense' and certain other papers,
which rung like clarions in the darkest hour of the Revolutionary
struggle, inspiring the bleeding and starving and pestilence-stricken as
the pen of no other man ever inspired them."
"_Shame rest on the pen which dares not to do him justice._"
"A religion which will incite its followers, with virtual unanimity, to
pursue with malignant hatred and to blacken with all the refinements of
insatiable malice the memory of a distinguished benefactor of the human
race, on the sole ground of his renunciation of certain theological
dogmas, is undeniably the embodiment of a spirit hostile to intellectual
liberty and human progress."--_James F. Morton, Jr._
"The national ingratitude displayed toward him on account of the fact
of his theological heresies has hardly a parallel in history. In
vindicating his memory, and calling attention, afresh to his invaluable
services, we are not indulging in a blind hero worship, but are
establishing a principle. The securing of justice to Paine, against the
venomous hatred invoked by his priestly enemies, involves a crushing
blow to clerical malice, and the winning of a victory which will have
large consequences. In the person of Paine, we are vindicating
the principles of religious liberty and confounding its
antagonists."--_Ibid._
"The Atheists and Secularists of our time are printing, reading,
revering a work ['Age of Reason'] that opposes their opinions. For above
its arguments and criticisms they see the faithful heart contending with
a mighty Apollyon, girt with all the forces of revolutionary and royal
Terrorism. Just this one Englishman, born again in America, confronting
George III. and Robespierre on earth and tearing the like of them
from the throne of the universe! Were it only for the grandeur of this
spectacle in the past Paine would maintain his hold on thoughtful minds.
But in America the hold is deeper than that. In this self-forgetting
insurrection of the human heart against deified Inhumanity there is an
expression of the inarticulate wrath of humanity against continuance of
the same wrong... There is still visible, however refined, the sting
and claw of the Apollyon against whom Paine hurled his far-reaching
dart."--_Dr. Conway._
Judge Thomas Herttell: "No man in modern ages has done more to benefit
mankind, or distinguished himself more for the immense moral good he has
effected for his species, than Thomas Paine."