During the American Revolutionary War, it is generally agreed that 1/3 of the population of the Thirteen Colonies supported independence from Great Britain, 1/3 did not, and 1/3 were on the fence, falling on whichever side seemed to be the most advantageous at the time. On 10 January, 1776, a small pamphlet, Common Sense, was published in Philadelphia by an anonymous author which immediately unified the 1/3 that supported independence from Great Britain, and a good many of the fence sitters, if only temporarily.

Penned by Thomas Paine, an English born recent immigrant to America, Common Sense provided an easily digestible and, pardon the pun, common sense argument on why American independence was not just desirable for the Thirteen Colonies, but for mankind itself, particularly those that languished under a dictatorial absolute monarch. (Which, to be fair, the British monarchy wasn’t, but perception is reality.)

Unlike most Enlightenment treatises, which targeted other scholars, Paine’s target audience was America’s lower and middle classes. He eschewed the appeals to authority to obscure Greek and Roman thinkers, as Voltaire, Rousseau, and even Franklin were wont to do, and made his case, convincingly, through straight logic emphasized by Bible quotes for his primarily devout Protestant working class audience.

Common Sense flew off the printing presses and is the bestselling book in American history. It is the high water mark of Enlightenment literature and so influential that the future Declaration of Independence, US Constitution, Polish Constitution of 1791, and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen were direct results of the mere 48 page pamphlet.

There are no asterisks, and Common Sense is just as relevant today as it was 245 years ago.

Thomas Paine’s Common Sense is Required Reading for Humanity.

Some Quotes:

“I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense.”

“Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happinesspositively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.”

“The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.”

“In England a king hath little more to do than to make war and give away places; which in plain terms, is to impoverish the nation and set it together by the ears. A pretty business indeed for a man to be allowed eight hundred thousand sterling a year for, and worshipped into the bargain! Of more worth is one honest man to society and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.”

Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.

“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.”

“Small islands, not capable of protecting themselves, are the proper objects for kingdoms to take under their care; but there is something absurd, in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island.”