Frequently Asked

Paine was a deist. He believed in a single creator-God whose existence was inferred from the order of the natural world; he rejected revealed religion -- the claim that scripture or the priesthood carry God's authority. The Age of Reason opens with the line “I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.” Theodore Roosevelt's slur (the one this site adopts as its banner) called him an atheist; the slur was wrong on the substantive point.

Theodore Roosevelt called Paine that in his 1888 biography of Gouverneur Morris. The phrase has stuck to Paine ever since -- it's the line that did the political work of putting him outside the pale of respectable American memory while his ideas continued to be borrowed without attribution. We adopt the title because it's the one phrase about Paine that everyone remembers; the rest of the site is the argument that Roosevelt was lying. See the launch essay Why “Filthy Little Atheist”.

The Conway Edition is The Writings of Thomas Paine, a four-volume scholarly collection published by G. P. Putnam's Sons between 1894 and 1896, edited by Moncure D. Conway (1832-1907). It remains the standard nineteenth-century edition; the twentieth-century Foner edition (Citadel, 1945) supplements rather than supersedes it. This site reproduces the Conway text in full -- 55 distinct works across the four volumes -- with stable URIs and per-paragraph citation anchors. See Conway on Paine for the editorial frame.

Yes. Paine died in 1809; his complete writings are in the public domain worldwide. The Conway Edition (1894-96) is also public domain by age. You may read, copy, quote, translate, and redistribute the texts freely. The editorial commentary on this site is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0; site code is MIT. See License.

Start with Common Sense (1776) -- the pamphlet that made American independence unavoidable. From there read The American Crisis #1 (the “times that try men's souls” pamphlet), then Rights of Man Part I, then The Age of Reason Part I, then Agrarian Justice. That sequence is the Editor's Spotlight. For longer paths see Reading Paths.

Franklin sponsored his emigration to Philadelphia in 1774. Washington had Crisis #1 read to the troops at McKonkey's Ferry. Jefferson dispatched a US warship to bring Paine home from France in 1801. Lafayette gave him the Bastille key to deliver to Washington. Burke was the sparring partner of Rights of Man. Wollstonecraft and Blake moved in his London circle. Robespierre signed his arrest warrant. See Connections for the full circle with portraits and editorial glosses.

Yes. Press / from anywhere to open the popup search, or visit Search for the full results page. Search runs entirely in your browser via Pagefind -- no server log of what you look for. The full feature list is on the Features page.

Yes. Every work supports highlighting passages, annotating them, and saving the work for later. All of it is stored locally in your browser -- no account, no login, nothing leaves your device. See Notes & Highlights and Saved Readings.

Dark mode is built in; toggle it from the masthead, or it follows your system preference automatically. Once a page is loaded, the text remains readable offline. The site has no third-party tracking and respects prefers-reduced-motion. See Accessibility.

We have 55 works ingested at present -- every major piece plus most of the Vol III correspondence. A small number of Conway-attributed fragments and shorter pieces are still being transcribed. If you spot a missing work or a transcription error, please tell me and I'll prioritise it.

Cite the original Conway Edition (1894-96) as the primary source for Paine's writings. You may link to this site as a convenient digital edition. Each work page has a one-click cite tool with MLA, APA, Chicago, BibTeX, and RIS formats; the editor's introductions and blog essays are CC BY-SA 4.0 and should cite author + URL. See How to cite.

Yes. Every work is downloadable as plain text, structured JSON, BibTeX, RIS, and TEI P5 XML. A complete corpus tarball is at /api/downloads/conway-complete.zip. The OAI-PMH 2.0 endpoint at /api/oai-pmh/identify.xml is harvestable by DPLA, the Internet Archive, and university catalogs. See Data & APIs and For Researchers.

Yes. We welcome well-researched essays on Paine's ideas, life, contemporaries, or the broader history of revolutionary republicanism and freethought. See the contribute page for submission details and editorial standards.

Yes, the main feed is at /feed.xml. Subscribe in any reader to follow new essays and additions to the archive. There's also a JSON Feed of the This Day in Paine's Life calendar.

Use the contact form and include the work title plus a short excerpt of the passage. The transcription is the Cornell-Conway scans with the cleaner Project Gutenberg releases as overrides for the major works; reader-reported corrections are always welcome and credited on the errata page.