Thomas Paine (born Thomas Pain, February 9, 1737 [O.S. January 29, 1736] – June 8, 1809) was an English-born American Founding Father, French Revolutionary, inventor, political philosopher, and statesman. His pamphlets Common Sense (1776) and The American Crisis (1776–1783) framed the Patriot argument for independence from Great Britain at the outset of the American Revolution. Paine advanced Enlightenment-era arguments for human rights that shaped revolutionary discourse on both sides of the Atlantic.
Born in Thetford, Norfolk, Paine immigrated to the British American colonies in 1774 with the help of Benjamin Franklin, arriving in time to participate in the American Revolution. Virtually every American Patriot read his 47-page pamphlet Common Sense, which catalyzed the call for independence from Great Britain. He followed that breakthrough with the pro-independence American Crisis pamphlet series. Paine returned to Britain in 1787 and wrote Rights of Man (1791) to rebut critics of the French Revolution, particularly the Anglo-Irish conservative writer Edmund Burke.