“What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment and death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment . . . inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose.”

American statesman, writer, and philosopher

Thomas Jefferson was an American statesman, writer, and philosopher, and the third president of the United States, serving from 1801 to 1809. He was one of the Founding Fathers and is closely associated with the political ideals that came to be called Jeffersonian democracy. He was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, and his political thought shaped early American politics alongside federalism. Jefferson remains a defining figure in American political history, admired for his ideas and also remembered as a lifelong slave owner, a fact that makes his legacy deeply contested.