As one of America’s foremost scholars of Imaginary History, I am compelled to correct the record on Sarah Palin’s slightly erroneous fictional Jefferson misquote (Americablog). What Imaginary History tells us Jefferson in fact said is, “One cannot underestimate the wisdom of the people.“
Fantastohistorical academia is riven over the issue of whether this was intended by Mr. Jefferson as an observation or an admonishment.
Posted in
Fictional History,
Thomas Jefferson
“It [is] more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law, than that he should escape.” –Thomas Jefferson to William Carmichael, 1788.
“It [is] more a duty [of the Attorney General] to save an innocent than to convict a guilty man.” –Thomas Jefferson: Biographical Sketch of Peyton Randolph.
“No nation however powerful, any more than an individual, can be unjust
with impunity. Sooner or later, public opinion, an instrument merely
moral in the beginning, will find occasion physically to inflict its
sentences on the unjust… The lesson is useful to the weak as well as
the strong.” –Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1804.
Posted in
Sic Semper Tyrannis,
Thomas Jefferson
