Rev. Dr. Thomas Slicer: "The progress of the world in political and religious liberty will be written in the estimates that the world has learned to take of Thomas Paine during the hundred years since he fell into an unnoticed grave."
"Thomas Paine made it impossible to write the history of human liberty with his name left out. He was one of the creators of light. He was one of the heralds of the dawn."—Col. R. G. Ingersoll.
"I enjoy myself when I think how free I am, and I thank this man for it. When I think of that the whole horizon is full of glory, and joy comes to me in every ray of sunshine and every rustle of the winds."—Ibid.
James F. Morton, Jr.:
"Since time began,
No greater prophet faced the savage ban
Of priest and king."
Rev. David W. Bush: "How unwise to deny myself the companionship of one of the greatest, bravest, most self-sacrificing men of all time because he has written things I cannot accept."
Pearl W. Geer: "This is the beauty of Free-thought—the glory of Infidelity. We recognize good in everything where good is to be found. While we do not accept all of Thomas Paine's ideas we recognize in him the greatest man the world has ever known."
"There is not in Illinois a monument that stands as high as Abraham Lincoln; nor in Massachusetts as high as Ralph Waldo Emerson; nor in the world as high as Thomas Paine."—L. K. Washburn.
"The wisest, brightest, humblest son of earth."
—Clio Rickman.
Rev. George Croly: "An impartial estimate of this remarkable man has been rarely formed and still more rarely expressed. He was assuredly one of the original men of the age in which he lived."