Thomas Paine, so celebrated and so despised as he traveled

The words of Edmund Morgan, when he wrote, “Thomas Paine, so celebrated and so despised as he traveled through the critical events of his time, has long appealed to biographers. Paine was present at the creation both of the United States and of the French Republic. His eloquence, in the pamphlet ‘Common Sense,’ propelled the American colonists toward independence,” are a hymn to one of the fiercest and most misunderstood spirits of the Enlightenment — Thomas Paine, the pen that set revolutions aflame. In these lines, Morgan captures the duality of greatness: that those who dare to speak truth in an age of complacency are both celebrated and despised, lifted up by the brave and cursed by the fearful. Paine was not a ruler, nor a general, nor a king — he wielded no sword, commanded no army. Yet his weapon was mightier than any blade: the word, sharpened by conviction, ignited by passion, and guided by reason.

Born into modest circumstances in England, Thomas Paine crossed the ocean not as a conqueror, but as a seeker of purpose. When he arrived in the American colonies, the winds of discontent had already begun to stir, yet the people hesitated, unsure of their path. They felt the weight of British rule but feared the leap toward independence. Into this uncertainty came Paine’s Common Sense, a pamphlet small in form yet vast in power. In it, he spoke with the thunder of moral clarity, declaring that liberty was not the privilege of the few, but the birthright of all mankind. He stripped monarchy of its divine pretense and revealed it as tyranny cloaked in ceremony. “The cause of America,” he wrote, “is in great measure the cause of all mankind.” Thus, in one stroke, he transformed rebellion into duty, and dissent into destiny.

Morgan reminds us that Paine’s greatness lay not only in his eloquence but in his presence — that he stood at the very birth of two worlds: America and France, nations conceived in the struggle for liberty. Few men in history have fought for freedom on two continents, and fewer still with such purity of purpose. In America, he gave voice to revolution; in France, he gave counsel to republicans yearning to cast off the chains of monarchy. Yet in both lands, he was both prophet and pariah — exalted when his words served, abandoned when his truth grew inconvenient. For the fate of reformers has ever been the same: they light the fire that others use to see, but often burn themselves in its glow.

The paradox that Morgan describes — that Paine was “so celebrated and so despised” — is not a contradiction, but the mark of true courage. Those who walk the middle path offend no one, but neither do they change the world. Paine refused the comfort of neutrality. When others sought compromise with oppression, he demanded independence. When others sought stability under kings, he proclaimed the sovereignty of reason and the equality of all men. His defiance cost him dearly. He was denounced as a heretic in England, imprisoned during the French Revolution, and scorned by the new American leaders who owed their freedom in part to his pen. Yet, though he died poor and nearly forgotten, his words outlived the hatred of his age — for truth, once spoken, cannot die.

Consider this: when Common Sense was published in 1776, it sold over 100,000 copies in a population of barely three million — an explosion of influence unprecedented in its time. Farmers read it by firelight; soldiers carried it in their knapsacks. It gave the common man a language of dignity, a sense that he, too, was a builder of nations. It was not a pamphlet of politics, but a revelation of identity. Paine wrote not to persuade kings, but to awaken people — to teach them that freedom is not granted from above but claimed from within. Thus, his eloquence propelled the American colonists toward independence, as Morgan writes — not because his words ordered them, but because they made them believe in themselves.

Yet Paine’s legacy is greater still. His writings, from The Rights of Man to The Age of Reason, challenged every throne, every church, every false authority that enslaved the mind of man. He dared to say that the highest loyalty is not to crown or creed, but to conscience. In this, he became not just the voice of two revolutions, but the herald of all that would come after — of every movement that seeks to replace fear with knowledge, and subjugation with self-rule. Morgan, the historian, saw in him the eternal archetype of the reformer: flawed, fiery, and unforgettable — one whose faith in reason and humanity shaped the moral architecture of modern freedom.

So, O listener, let this be the lesson you carry: that truth and independence are seldom born in comfort. Those who change the world must endure its rejection. Like Paine, do not fear being despised, for to awaken the conscience of your time is to stir both its gratitude and its wrath. Speak, even when your words make others tremble. Write, even when your thoughts defy the powerful. For every age needs its Paine — one who dares to remind the people of their forgotten strength, one who declares, again and again, that the birthright of humanity is freedom.

Thus, the wisdom of Edmund Morgan’s reflection endures: that Thomas Paine, the voice of reason amidst rebellion, the exile who belonged to no nation but served all mankind, remains the eternal symbol of independence. His eloquence, born of suffering and conviction, still burns across the centuries like the torch he lit — a flame that whispers to every soul who would live freely: “The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark.”