it’s not just students and Presidents, it is every American–indeed, every human life ever touched by the daring idea of self-government–that Mr. Jefferson has influenced.

When he first charted the ground on which we gather today, there was just a field of grass, a horizon limited only by the blue mountains beyond. But Jefferson surveyed a horizon that no one else could see. He saw the graceful dome of the Rotunda, the elegance of the Lawn and its pavilions. He saw...

When Thomas Jefferson wrote that governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, it was a simple and important act of the human spirit. What gave meaning to that act, however, was the fact that the author backed it up with his life. It was not...

Jefferson was a childhood hero of mine, not because of his science, but because he, more than anybody else, was responsible for the spread of democracy throughout the world. And the idea, breath-taking, radical, revolutionary at that time—and some places in the world, it still is today—is that...

For myself I found one thing to be true: having once begun a dialogue with Jefferson one continues the conversation with him forever.

in the history of liberty he’s a great figure everywhere in the world. One always wonders what makes the difference between someone who has the tenacity to pursue his ideals and his beliefs against all opposition and a person who is just a politician. I think the great politicians and statesmen...

I am struck by how much the life and mysteries of Thomas Jefferson have animated, have confounded, and may ultimately reconcile our national life. He is a kind of Rosetta Stone of the American experience, a massive, tectonic intelligence that has formed and rattled the fault lines of our history...

Out of his own hopes and fears, his travels and reading, Jefferson invented an uniquely American West … In their maps and in their minds, by what they did and what they wrote, Lewis and Clark imprinted Jefferson’s western vision on a westering nation.

The principles that Thomas Jefferson enshrined in the Declaration became the guiding principles of the new nation. And at every generation, Americans have rededicated themselves to the belief that all men are created equal, with the God-given right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness....

A quotation commonly misattributed to Thomas Jefferson.

A quotation commonly misattributed to Thomas Jefferson.