The Rights of Reason

"As the 19th century progressed, Paine's inspiration resurfaced, and his influence was felt in the movement for reform of parliament in England, and in the agitation against slavery in America. John Brown, ostensibly a Calvinist, had Paine's books in his camp. Abraham Lincoln was a close reader of his work, and used to deploy arguments from The Age of Reason in his disputes with religious sectarians, as well as more general Paineite themes in his campaign to turn a bloody civil war into what he called 'a second American revolution'. The rise of the labour movement and the agitation for women's suffrage saw Paine's example being revived and quoted. When Franklin Roosevelt made his great speech to rally the American people against fascism after the attack on Pearl Harbor, he quoted an entire paragraph from Paine's The Crisis beginning: 'These are the times that try men's souls ...'"

Christopher Hitchens in The Guardian assesses the world's greatest Englishman.