New York World: "The man whose 'Common Sense,' by Washington's testimony, 'worked a powerful change in the minds of men' toward American independence; who in the 'Rights of Man' demolished Burke's attack on the French Revolution so completely that the British government resorted to its suppression, and who in France set the world aflame with persecution mania by the 'Age of Reason,' certainly made good in three countries his title to literary rank and political power." "The three mightiest contributions of political and religious freedom which mankind had known came from the brain of Thomas Paine. What he wrote changed the whole civilized world."—L. K. Washburn.
Rev. E. P. Powell (referring to the "Crisis"): "Words of fire and logic that rang like a berserker's sword on his shield."
"The 'Crisis' is contained in sixteen numbers. They comprise a truer history of that event [American Revolution] than does any professed history of it yet written. They comprise the soul of it."—Calvin Blanchard.
"Of utterances by the pen none have achieved such vast results as Paine's 'Common Sense' and his first 'Crisis.'"—Dr. Conway.
In addition to his three literary masterpieces and the "Crisis" Paine wrote many remarkable books and pamphlets, the more important of which are the following: "Public Good," Philadelphia, 1780; "Letter to Abbé Raynal," Philadelphia, 1782; "Dissertation on Government," Philadelphia, 1786; "Prospects on the Rubicon," London, 1787; "Address of Société Républicaine," Paris, 1791; "Address to the Adressers," London, 1792; "Plea for Life of Louis Capet," "French Constitution of '93," Paris, 1793; "On First Principles of Government," Paris, 1795; "Decline and Fall of the English System of Finance," published in all the languages of Europe. 1796; "Agrarian Justice," "Letter to Camille Jordan, Paris, 1797; "Essay on Dreams," "Examination of Prophecies," New York, 1807; "Reply to Bishop of Llandaff," New York, 1810; "Miscellaneous Poems,"'London, 1819.
"These [Paine's books] were battles, victories—the simplest, yet the grand and notorious facts of that wondrous war and age."—T. B. Wakeman.
M. de Bonneville, the noted French journalist and Revolutionary leader, and the almost constant companion of Paine during the ten or more years that he resided in Paris, says: "All his pamphlets have been popular and powerful. He wrote with composure and steadiness, as if under the guidance of a tutelary genius. If, for an instant, he stopped, it was always in the attitude of a man who listens. The Saint Jerome of Raphael would give a perfect idea of his contemplative recollection, to listen to the voice from on high which makes itself heard in the heart."
"When the old traditions of prejudice have passed, away, Paine's name will have its due place not only in our political but in our literary history, as that of a man of native genius whose prose bears being read beside that of Burke on the same theme, and who found in sincerity the secret of a nobler eloquence than his antagonists could draw from their stores of literature or the fountain of their ill-will."—John M. Robertson.
"He was a great writer. Cobbett knew it, Hazlitt knew it, and Landor knew it."—George W. Foote.
George Brandes: "One of the largest figures in our literary history."