Current Literature: "The present indications are that posterity will preserve the favorable, rather than the unfavorable, picture of Thomas Paine. His influence is steadily growing."
Col. John C. Bundy: "Paine's influence is waxing broader, deeper and more aggressive with each succeeding generation. At the end of a century, more of his theological and political works are sold each year than those of any other theologian or politician America has ever known. All the progress of the century has been in the direction in which he steered."
The Nation (London): "The magnitude, variety, and immediate efficacy of Paine's writings constitute him one of the chief personal forces of the revolutionary age.... He carried into the New England across the water a consuming passion for human justice and liberty, not as platform phrases, but as hard, concrete goods worth fighting and dying for, which set America afire, when she was confusedly pondering an impossible and unnatural reconciliation. From America to France, fresh in the throes of her great upheaval, he passed, not as an incendiary, but as a moderating and constructive influence in her national convention, risking his very life for the cause of clemency in dealing with a traitorous king. From France to England, carrying the same doctrines of liberty in politics and religion, not a cold utilitarian conception of individual rights, but a rich human gospel of a commonwealth sustained by a passion of humanity as deep and real as ever influenced the soul of man.
"He will recover a glorious though tardy fame among those who take the necessary trouble to rectify false estimates and to do honor to one of the most truly honorable men who have striven to serve mankind."
"He died broken with many griefs, to be remembered by a later age as the great Commoner of mankind."—Library of The World's Best Literature.
Charles Edward Russell: "The soul of Thomas Paine was 'like a star and dwelt apart.' He kept his own self-respect and the integrity of his mind."
"He lived a long, laborious, and useful life. The world is better for his having lived. For the sake of truth he accepted hatred and reproach. He ate the bitter bread of sorrow. His friends were untrue to him because he was true to himself, and true to them. He lost the respect of what is called society, but kept his own. His life is what the world calls a failure, and what history calls success."—Ingersoll.
Daniel Edwin Wheeler: "History continually reverses her statements at the command of Truth, and the latter is slowly but certainly rehabilitating the name and fame of Paine. The slime of a mythology which has for over a century stained his reputation is disappearing and the prophet pamphleteer is coming into his own."
Dr. Muzzey, of New York, honored by Harvard, the Sorbonne of Paris, and the University of Berlin, at the tomb of Thomas Paine, in 1909, gave utterance to this tribute: "The democracy for which Robert Burns sang and for which Thomas Paine labored is still a bright ideal in the distant future, the star of brotherhood over a humanity still in the cradle. Today, and only today, Thomas Paine is beginning to be appreciated as the prophet of that democracy which means full human brotherhood. His fame will grow with the years. The marvelous services of his brain, of his pen, which was never dipped in the ink of malice or slander, of his wonderful devotion as a soldier, as a prophet of freedom,... is coming to be understood. As the realization of that service of Paine grows, it will loom larger and larger. And when the day of democracy shall have come, when the principles for which Paine stood shall have fully replaced the awful dogmas of the past, as they are slowly and surely replacing those dogmas, then he will come to his own."
Rev. James Kay Applebee: "I see Thomas Paine as he looms up in history—a great, grand figure. The reputation bigots have created for him fades away, even as the creeds for which they raved and lied fade away; but distinct and luminous, there remains the noble character of Thomas Paine created by himself."