"Common Sense" -Thomas Paine

"...a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right..." and thus begins Thomas Paine's essay entitled Common Sense.

I haven't always wanted to read this but I'm glad I did. Paine discusses many problems with a monarchy as he voices his arguments for America to leave Britain. He also maps out how often a people slowly come to accept a government for what it is rather than what it should be.

I found Paine to be eloquent and succinct. He believes a society works best when people are highly moral and govern themselves; I believe in that, although I see why such a society is impossible to purposefully form or maintain. However, he has the right idea for how involved a people should be with the people they allow to govern them. Some of my favorite quotes from the book were:

"…leave the legislative part to be managed by a select number chosen from the whole body, who are supposed to have the same concerns at stake which those have who appointed them, and who will act in the same manner as the whole body would act were they present." (p.7, para 3)

"Common sense will tell us, that the power which hath endeavoured to subdue us, is of all others the most improper to defend us." (p.51, para 3)

"[Despotic] governments consider man merely as an animal; that the exercise of intellectual faculty is not his privilege; that he has nothing to do with the laws but to obey them." (p.101, para 4)

Warning! Paine does include some math on how much a navy would cost for America and how much it does cost for Britain, with diagramed statistics.

Read Also:

Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay Self-Reliance talks of thinking for oneself instead of following the mob.

Jean Fritz's Shh! We're Writing the Constitution is a quick but interesting look at the forming of the Constitution.