Charles James Fox: "It ['Rights of Man'] seems as clear and as simple as the first rules of arithmetic."
Manchester Constitutional Society (March 13, 1792): "A work of the highest importance to every nation under heaven, but particularly to this, as containing excellent and practical plans for an immediate and considerable reduction of the public expenditure; for the prevention of wars; for the extension of our manufactures and commerce; for the education of the young; for the comfortable support of the aged; for the better maintenance of the poor."
Sheffield Society for Constitutional Information (March 14, 1792): "We have derived more true knowledge from the two works of Thomas Paine, entitled 'Rights of Man,' Parts First and Second, than from any other author. The practice as well as the principle of government is laid down in those works in a manner so clear and irresistibly convincing."
James Anthony Froude: "Copies of Paine's 'Rights of Man' were sown broadcast [in Ireland]."
"Protestant Belfast had declared itself a disciple of Paine."
"The Irish patriots were red republicans... anxious to establish in Ireland the principles of Paine."
"Paine," says his biographer, Dr. Conway, "held a supremacy in the constitutional clubs of England and Ireland equal to that of Robespierre over the Jacobins of Paris."
William Pitt (to Lady Hester Stanhope, who had quoted from the "Rights of Man"): "Paine is quite in the right, but what am I to do?"
Sir James Mackintosh: "His bold speculations and fierce invectives indicated the approach of social confusion."
Prof. G. P. Gooch, M.A.: "The 'Rights of Man,' compelled attention not less by the novelty of its ideas than by its consummate pamphleteering skill.... The alarm increased when it was known that the book was selling by tens of thousands."