Thomas Paine, American Founding Father, philosopher, and inventor authored some of the most influential and inspirational works supporting the American Revolution: The American Crisis and Common Sense. He also wrote a rousing defense of the 1789 French Revolution: The Rights of Man.

Paine’s thesis in “The Rights of Man” is that human rights are natural rights, inalienable, and not subject to the caprices of the governing class. They cannot be repealed. He asserts that men are born free and equal, and the government’s purpose is to preserve these natural rights, chiefly: liberty, security, property, and resistance to oppression.

Paine, like Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, believed that citizens must stand firm against tyranny to uphold the principles of justice and liberty. Jefferson’s eloquence is unparalleled when he wrote in the Declaration: “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…”

Source: Rights of Man by Thomas Paine, 1791. Graphic: Liberty Leading the People by Eugene Delacroix 1830. Public Domain.