Library of The World's Best Literature: "The pamphlets of Thomas Paine were doubtless in their time 'half battles.' Clear, logical, homely, by turns warning, appealing, commanding, now sharply satirical, now humorous, now pathetic, always desperately in earnest, always written in admirably simple English, they constituted their author, in the judgment of many, the foremost pamphleteer of the eighteenth century."
Lord Brougham: "The most remarkable spirit in pamphlet literature was Thomas Paine.... His style was a model of terseness and force."
"This singular power of clear, vigorous exposition made him unequaled as a pamphleteer."—Sir Leslie Stephen.
London Times (June 8, 1909): "Paine was the greatest of pamphleteers; more potent in influence on affairs than Swift, Beaumarchais, or Courier, more varied in his activity than any of them; his words influencing the actors in two of the chief political revolutions of the world and prime movers in a religious revolution scarcely less important."
"Perhaps someone, even in far off times, digging in the past, will come upon his books and will say, 'These were not words; they were events, in political history. This was a born leader who could make men march to victory or defeat.'"
Manchester Guardian (June 8, 1909): "He and his works became the great influence which set up everywhere constitutional societies and encouraged political and religious freedom of thought. He became the interpreter to England of the principles of the two Revolutions, and his words and ideas leavened speculations among the masses of the English people, and still leaven them today. We may forget him or remember him awry, but the very stuff of our brains is woven in the loom of his devising."
James K. Hosmer, LL. D.: "Few writers have exerted a more powerful influence since the world began, if the claim set forth at the time and never refuted be just, that his 'Common Sense' made possible the Declaration of Independence and therefore the United States of America."
Constitutional Gazette (Feb. 24, 1776): "The author introduces [in 'Common Sense'] a new system of polices as widely different from the old as the Copernican system is from the Ptolemaic. This extraordinary performance contains as surprising a discovery in politics as the works of Sir Isaac Newton do in philosophy."
"It would be difficult to name any human composition which has had an effect at once so instant, so extended and so lasting."—Sir George Trevelyan.
Paul Louis Courrier (1824): "Never did any portly volume effect so much for the human race. Rallying all hearts and minds to the party of Independence, it decided the issue of that great conflict which, ended for America, is still proceeding all over the rest of the world."