Thomas Paine Quotes
In no instance hath nature made the satellite larger than its primary planet.
Paine, in Common Sense, marshaled and enumerated every argument he could think of for independence of the American colonies from England. In this case, he used nature and the natural order of the planets to argue that since America was larger than England, it was unnatural for America to be subservient. The term “satellite” meant “moon” and all moons were smaller than the planets about which they revolved.
Thomas Paine Common Sense 1776
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Greece claims him as well since the Greek culture was dominant throughout the Mediterranean at the time. While he was wrong about light being able to completely circle the earth, note that his view of the Earth is spherical. Most thinkers had rejected the flat earth even 400 years before Christ. It was the Church that solidified the flat earth concept.
Thomas Paine was an English-born American political activist, philosopher, political theorist, and revolutionary. He authored Common Sense (1776) and The American Crisis (1776–1783), the two most influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution, and helped inspire the patriots in 1776 to declare independence from Great Britain. His ideas reflected Enlightenment-era ideals of transnational human rights. Historian Saul K. Padover described him as "a corsetmaker by trade, a journalist by profession, and a propagandist by inclination".
