Thomas Jefferson Quotes

“In three years of backbreaking studies that, according to Madison, "exacted perhaps the most severe of Jefferson's public labors," Jefferson had almost single-handedly provided "a mine of legislative wealth" that provided Virginians with a modern republic built on the foundations of Greece and Rome. It became a model for other states and the pattern after which the federal republic of the United States was modeled. Jefferson, in short, in his legal laboratory atop Monticello, invented the United States of America.”
― Willard Sterne Randall, Thomas Jefferson: A Life

“But Henry was not prepared to submit. In a speech supporting his resolutions, he supposedly exclaimed, "Tarquin and Caesar had each his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell, and George the Third..." Before he could finish the phrase, red-robed Speaker of the House John Robinson cried, "Treason! Treason," as other burgesses took up the cry. But Henry stared the Speaker in the eye and finished his sentence: "...may profit by their example! If this be treason, make the most of it!”
― Willard Sterne Randall, Thomas Jefferson: A Life