Enlightenment

Thomas Jefferson

1743–1826

Drafter of the Declaration

The truths he called self-evident were edited by a congress and contradicted by his own life as an enslaver. The sentence remains the claim a later country used against the limits of the man who wrote it.

In the canon

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of…The Declaration of Independence

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