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Thomas Paine (January 29, 1737 ? June 8, 1809) was an intellectual, scholar, revolutionary, deist and idealist. A radical pamphleteer, Paine anticipated and helped foment the American Revolution through his powerful writings, most notably Common Sense, an incendiary pamphlet advocating independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain.

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An advocate of liberalism, he outlined his political philosophy in Rights of Man, written both as a reply to Edmund Burke's view of the French Revolution and as a general political philosophy treatise as well as Common Sense, a treatise on the benefits of personal liberty and limited government, in which he considers society a representation of human ideals, and government a necessary evil.\

Paine was also noteworthy for his support of deism, taking its form in his treatise on religion The Age of Reason, as well as for his eye-witness accounts of both the French and American Revolutions.

Some believe Paine may have begun to form his early views on natural justice while listening to the Puritan mob jeering and attacking those punished in the stocks. Others have argued that he was influenced by his Quaker father. In The Age of Reason ? Paine's treatise in support of deism ? he wrote:

The religion that approaches the nearest of all others to true deism, in the moral and benign part thereof, is that professed by the Quakers ? though I revere their philanthropy, I cannot help smiling at [their] conceit; ? if the taste of a Quaker [had] been consulted at the Creation, what a silent and drab-colored Creation it would have been! Not a flower would have blossomed its gaieties, nor a bird been permitted to sing.

Paine advocated a liberal world view, considered radical in his day. He dismissed monarchy, and viewed all government as, at best, a necessary evil. He opposed slavery and was amongst the earliest proponents of social security, universal free public education, a guaranteed minimum income, and many other radical ideas now common practice in most western democracies.

With regard to his religious views, in The Age of Reason (begun in France in 1793), Paine stated:

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.
All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
He described himself as a "Deist" and commented:

How different is [Christianity] to the pure and simple profession of Deism! The true Deist has but one Deity, and his religion consists in contemplating the power, wisdom, and benignity of the Deity

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Paine

Read COMMON SENSE and THE CRISIS here....

http://www.bartleby.com/133/

http://www.ushistory.org/paine/crisis/