[英國]托馬斯·潘恩/Thomas Paine
托馬斯·潘恩（1737-1809），英國散文家、政論家。出生於英格蘭，才華出眾，家境寒微，自學成才，學識廣博，在自然科學和人文科學上都作過深入研究，渴望重建公平的社會秩序。37歲來到美國費城，深受富蘭克林的賞識。本書所摘《常識》是他的成名作。其他代表作有《危機》、《理性時代》。文筆質樸，說理深入淺出，文風平易近人。
In the following pages I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense, and have no other preliminaries to settle with the reader, than that he will divest himself of prejudice and prepossession, and suffer his reason and his feelings to determine for themselves:that he will put on, or rather that he will not put off, the true character of a man, and generously enlarge his views beyond the present day.
Volumes have been written on the subject of the struggle between England and America. Men of all ranks have embarked in the controversy, from different motives, and with various designs;but all have been ineffectual, and the period of debate is closed. Arms as the last resource decide the contest;the appeal was the choice of the King, and the continent has accepted the challenge.
It has been reported of the late Mr. Pelham（who though an able minister was not without his faults）that on his being attacked in the House of Commons on the score that his measures were only of a temporary kind, replied,“they will last my time.”Should a thought so fatal and unmanly possess the colonies in the present contest, the name of ancestors will be remembered by future generations with detestation.
The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth. It's not the affair of a city, a county, a province, or a kingdom;but of a continent-of at least one eighth part of the habitable globe. It's not the concern of a day, a year, or an age;posterity are virtually involved in the contest, and will be more or less affected even to the end of time, by the proceedings now. Now is the seed time of continental union, faith and honor. The least fracture now will be like a name engraved with the point of a pin on the tender rind of a young oak;the will would enlarge with the tree, and posterity read it in full grown characters.