I said I would be part of the solution in Jefferson City, not part of the problem. And I said I'd take on the culture of corruption.
In Jefferson's mind democracy was tantamount to extreme individualism.
Plenty of gun opponents have pointed out the obvious: that the Founding Fathers could never have envisioned the kinds of 'arms' that exist today - Washington, Jefferson, and the rest had never even seen a bullet. Musket balls for guns that required constant reloading were the 'arms' of the day.
In America, Jefferson noted with approval, women knew their place.
Jesus and Lincoln, Moses and Jefferson can seem so long gone, so unbelievable, so dead.
I think people understand I'm not actually the real Thomas Jefferson.
At noon, on the Fourth of July, 1826, while the Liberty Bell was again sounding its old message to the people of Philadelphia, the soul of Thomas Jefferson passed on; and a few hours later John Adams entered into rest, with the name of his old friend upon his lips.
Why should the Eisenhower memorial be over twice the size of WWII Memorial? Why should it be so vast as to comfortably house two Lincoln Memorials, two Washington Monuments, and two Jefferson Memorials - all six at once?
But if there's an erosion at home, you know, Thomas Jefferson warned about a tyranny of an oligarchy and if we surrender our democracy to the tyranny of an oligarchy, we've made a terrible mistake.
When Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, declaring that all men were created equal, he owned slaves. Women couldn't vote. But, throughout history, our abolitionists, suffragettes, and civil rights leaders called on our nation, in reality, to live up to the nation's professed ideals in that Declaration.
Historically, if you look at people like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, people with disposable incomes have always been agricultural innovators.
Who would think it possible to redirect historical scholarship by explaining what Thomas Jefferson said in the Declaration of Independence?
Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence; Madison wrote not only the United States Constitution, or at least most of it, but also the most searching commentary on it that has ever appeared. Each of them served as president of the United States for eight years. What they had to say to each other has to command attention.
I suppose there's a melancholy tone at the back of the American mind, a sense of something lost. And it's the lost world of Thomas Jefferson. It is the lost sense of innocence that we could live with a very minimal state, with a vast sense of space in which to work out freedom.
Most Americans are unaware that Thomas Jefferson was the first American president to go to war against radical Islam. Jefferson was very concerned with Islam's war-like doctrine and its inability to separate mosque and state.
Harriet Washington, in 'Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present,' documents the smallpox experiments Thomas Jefferson performed on his Monticello slaves. In fact, much of what we now think of as public health emerged from the slave system.
We've become slaves to words like 'local,' 'fresh,' and 'seasonal.' We all want to be Thomas Jefferson's agrarian hero, but sustainable food is a difficult beast.
Hating Wall Street is an American tradition that dates back even to the days when Thomas Jefferson cursed that money lover Alexander Hamilton. And for centuries, the complaints about it have largely stayed the same: 'It does nothing! It creates chaos! It's a parasite that sucks hardworking Americans dry!'
Al Jefferson. One-on-one on the post, man, can't guard him.
Every White House has had its intellectuals, but very few presidents have been intellectuals themselves - Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Woodrow Wilson, the list more or less stops there.
Don't use your advance to buy an antique sports car, diamonds by the yard, or a bottle of wine from Thomas Jefferson's cellar instead of investing in your book.
Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt faced adversities that, in their times, seemed impregnable. Great presidents overcome great odds.
Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson hated each other so much. But that hate that they had for each other did not come before the love of their country.
We are not living up to Thomas Jefferson's idea of what a trial by jury means.
Look, in 1800 the sainted Thomas Jefferson arranged to hire a notorious slanderer named James Callender, who worked as a writer at a Republican newspaper in Richmond, Va. Read some of what he wrote about John Adams. This was a personal slander.
