All Men Are Created Equal
The quotation "All men are created equal" has been called an "immortal declaration", and "perhaps" the single phrase of the United States Revolutionary period with the most grand "continuing importance". Thomas Jefferson first used the phrase in the Declaration of Independence as a rebuttal to the going political theory of the day: the Divine Right of Kings. It was thereafter quoted or incorporated into speeches by a wide array of substantial figures in American political and social life in the United States. The final form of the phrase was stylized by Benjamin Franklin.
Read more about All Men Are Created Equal: Origin of Jefferson's Use of The Phrase, Slavery and The Phrase, Applications in American History, Hobbesian Origin
Famous quotes containing the words men, created and/or equal:
“What is it we heartily wish of each other? Is it to be pleased and flattered? No, but to be convicted and exposed, to be shamed out of our nonsense of all kinds, and made men of, instead of ghosts and phantoms.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Fame sometimes hath created something out of nothing. She hath made whole countries more than nature ever did, especially near the poles, and then hath peopled them likewise with inhabitants of her own invention, pigmies, giants, and amazons: yea, fame is sometimes like unto a mushroom, which Pliny recounts to be the greatest miracle in nature, because growing and having no root, as fame no ground of her reports.”
—Thomas Fuller (1608–1661)
“We are such docile creatures, normally, that it takes a virus to jolt us out of life’s routine. A couple of days in a fever bed are, in a sense, health-giving; the change in body temperature, the change in pulse rate, and the change of scene have a restorative effect on the system equal to the hell they raise.”
—E.B. (Elwyn Brooks)