Thomas Paine
1737 – 1809
English by birth
French citizen by decree
American by adoption
Author of
The American Crisis
Rights of Man
The Age of Reason
Your presence may remind Congress (and the people) of your past services to this country.
George Washington
Left side of monument:
Washington’s sword would have been wielded in vain had it not been supported by the pen of Paine. History is to ascribe the American Revolution to Thomas Paine.
John Adams
The citizens of the United States cannot look back upon the time of their own Revolution without recollecting among the names of their most distinguished patriots that of Thomas Paine.
James Monroe
America is indebted to few characters more than you.
General Nathaniel Greene
Be assured my dear friend that instead of repenting that I was your introducer in America, I value myself on the share I had in procuring for it the acquisition of so useful and valuable a citizen.
Benjamin Franklin
Free American without her Thomas Paine is unthinkable.
Lafayette
Back of monument:
Presented to the people of Morristown, NJ
during the administrations of Mayors Clyde Potts and Edward K. Mills, Jr.
by the Thomas Paine Memorial Committee
Joseph Lewis – Secretary --- Georg Lober – sculptor
Dedicated July 4th 1950 in the 174th year of American Independence.
Right side of monument:
Independence is my happiness and I view things as they are without regard to place or person. My country is the world and my religion is to do good.
Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.
It is folly to argue against determined hardness eloquence may strike the ear and the language of sorrow draw forth the tear of compassion, but nothing can reach the heart that is steeled with prejudice.
We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the Earth for honest men to live in it is an affront to truth to treat falsehood with complaisance.
Thomas Paine
Marker is on Washington Street (County Route 510), on the left when traveling west.
Courtesy hmdb.org
