"When it shall be said in any country in the world, 'My poor are happy; neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive, the rational world is my friend, because I am the friend of its happiness,'—-when these things can be said, then may that country boast of its constitution and its government."
"The political events of our own day—of the present hour—point to the time when the ambitions and the wars of monarchy will be at an end, and when republican peace will reign throughout the world. Then shall the dream of Thomas Paine, the world's greatest citizen of the world, be realized."—Marshall J. Gaitvin.
Washington Irving: "A reprint of Paine's 'Rights of Man,' written in reply to Burke's pamphlet on the French Revolution, appeared [in America] under the auspices of Mr. Jefferson."
In introducing Paine's work to the American people Jefferson, then Secretary of State, said: "I have no doubt our citizens will rally a second time round the standard of 'Common Sense.'"
The Builders of the Nation: "At this time the Republican party as it was called, accepted the views of Jefferson, and as he openly accepted Paine's 'Rights of Man' it followed that the advanced views contained in that book grew to be held measurably as the party tenets of his followers."
Prof. E. D. Adams, Ph. D.: "As a cult [democracy], the theory undoubtedly first found adequate expression amongst us in the writings of Thomas Paine.... In these two books ['Common Sense' and 'Rights of Man'] Paine was then the first to state the ideal of democracy, as it later came to be accepted in America under the leadership of Jefferson."
In a letter to Monroe, referring to the censure he had received for his endorsement of Paine's book, Jefferson says: "I certainly merit the same, for I profess the same principles."
In a letter to Paine (June 19, 1792,) Jefferson says: "Our good people are firm and unanimous in their principles of Republicanism, and there is no better proof of it than that they love what you write and read it with delight."
James Madison declared the "Rights of Man" to be "a written defense of the principles on which that [our] Government is based."
For our so-called Jeffersonian Democracy we are indebted to Thomas Paine. He formulated its principles. Jefferson, Madison and others of his disciples popularized them.