Thomas Paine

Paine failed at everything until, at thirty-seven, he sailed to America and found his voice. Common Sense, written in language a farmer could read, made the case for independence so forcefully that it turned colonial grievance into revolution. He crossed back to Europe and answered Burke with the Rights of Man, defending the French Revolution and the principle that no generation may bind those unborn. The Age of Reason then turned his fire on organized religion. Celebrated, imprisoned, and finally scorned, he died nearly friendless, having done as much as any single writer to spread the idea that ordinary people may govern themselves.