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Who really said it

We have it in our power to begin the world over again

Written by Thomas Paine 1737–1809 · English-born political writer & pamphleteer of the American Revolution
Verified Free to reuse

Paine wrote this in the Appendix to the third edition of Common Sense (1776). The wording is genuine and confirmed against the primary text — a rare case where a stirring, oft-quoted revolutionary line survives scrutiny intact.

Last verified 16 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“We have it in our power to begin the world over again” Thomas Paine, Appendix to Common Sense (1776)

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Provenance

The source

Work
Common Sense (Appendix to the Third Edition)
Author
Thomas Paine
First published
1776
Section
Appendix, on forming a constitution

Should an independency be brought about by the first of those means, we have every opportunity and every encouragement before us, to form the noblest, purest constitution on the face of the earth. We have it in our power to begin the world over again. A situation, similar to the present, hath not happened since the days of Noah until now. The birthday of a new world is at hand…

The sentence stands as Paine’s own declaration, not a citation of anyone else; no earlier source for the exact line has been identified. The quotation marks often seen around it today are a modern editorial flourish — the original 1776 printing carries no such marks.

Read the Appendix to Common Sense at ushistory.org

How we verified this

Public domain

Common Sense was first published in 1776, so the text — including this line from the Appendix — has long been in the public domain in the United States.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

Commonly re-credited

The line is correctly Paine’s, but it travels under other names because of a famous 20th-century echo.

Ronald Reagan popularizer, not author

Reagan quoted the line in his 1980 Republican National Convention acceptance speech and returned to it often, so many hear it as his — but he explicitly credited “Tom Paine.”

The words are genuinely Paine’s, from the Appendix to Common Sense (1776); later speakers merely borrowed them.

Context

Why it mattered

Paine wrote the Appendix as the American colonies teetered on the edge of open revolt. The sentence distills his whole argument: that independence was not merely a grievance to be redressed but a once-in-history chance to build a new kind of government from scratch.

The line has since become a shorthand for American optimism and reinvention, quoted by presidents and activists alike — most famously by Ronald Reagan, who used it to close his 1980 convention speech.

The birthday of a new world is at hand.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Freedom Change Hope

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Common Sense, Appendix (full text)ushistory.org

Primary text of the Appendix containing the exact sentence.
Tom Paine on the ‘birthday of a new world’oll.libertyfund.org

Online Library of Liberty quotation page with the passage and 1776 dating.
Thomas Paine (Wikiquote)en.wikiquote.org

Wikiquote’s Thomas Paine page; the sentence appears in its ‘Quotes about Paine’ material, not as a sourced Common Sense entry.
Reagan’s 1980 acceptance speechreaganlibrary.gov

Where Reagan quotes Paine’s line and credits him by name.
Common Sense overviewbattlefields.org

Background on the pamphlet, its 1776 publication, and impact.

The author

About Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine

1737–1809 · English-born pamphleteer of the American Revolution

Thomas Paine was an English-born political writer whose 1776 pamphlet Common Sense helped turn American opinion toward independence, selling in the hundreds of thousands. He went on to write The American Crisis and Rights of Man, becoming one of the Revolution’s most influential and most controversial voices.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Thomas Paine, “Appendix” to Common Sense, 3rd ed. (Philadelphia: W. and T. Bradford, 1776).

MLA (9th ed.)

Paine, Thomas. “Appendix.” Common Sense, 3rd ed., W. and T. Bradford, 1776.

APA (7th ed.)

Paine, T. (1776). Appendix. In Common sense (3rd ed.). W. and T. Bradford.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘We have it in our power to begin the world over again’?” Last verified 16 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/we-have-it-in-our-power-to-begin-the-world-over-again/

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