A Quote by Stephen Ambrose

Jefferson owned slaves. He did not believe that all were created equal. He was a racist.

Stephen Ambrose

Quote Topics

Believe Created Did Equal Jefferson Owned Racist Were

Quote Author

Stephen Ambrose
American - Historian
January 10, 1936 - October 13, 2002

When Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, declaring that all men were created equal, he owned slaves. Women couldn't vote. But, throughout history, our abolitionists, suffragettes, and civil rights leaders called on our nation, in reality, to live up to the nation's professed ideals in that Declaration.

Marvin Ammori

The fact that Thomas Jefferson owned slaves doesn't devalue what he wrote.

Daniel Hannan

The English are no nearer than they were a hundred years ago to knowing what Jefferson really meant when he said that God had created all men equal.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

I free slaves because I believe we are all created equal. I just can't think of anything that has a higher purpose than putting value on human life.

Virginia Williams

In spite of what Thomas Jefferson wrote, all men may be created equal, but not to all women.

Bill Cosby

The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; and it is right; for if they were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal. There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Social rules are susceptible to moral analysis. This is, again, relatively familiar in the domestic case, where we now condemn slavery as unjust. And when we affirm this judgment, we're not merely saying that all those people who owned slaves were unethical people; they shouldn't have done that. We do believe this, but that's only part of the point. We also believe that the fugitive slave laws were unjust.

Thomas Pogge

If men were equal in America, all these Poles and English and Czechs and blacks, then they were equal everywhere, and there was really no such thing as foreigner; there were only free men and slaves.

Michael Shaara

When we were the political slaves of King George, and wanted to be free, we called the maxim that "all men are created equal" a self evident truth; but now when we have grown fat, and have lost all dread of being slaves ourselves, we have become so greedy to be masters that we call the same maxim "a self evident lie" The fourth of July has not quite dwindled away; it is still a great day-for burning fire-crackers!!!

Abraham Lincoln

Every member of the society spies on the rest, and it is his duty to inform against them. All are slaves and equal in their slavery... The great thing about it is equality... Slaves are bound to be equal.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

I believe that... every one of God's creatures was created equal. I believe that everyone should be treated equal, that's the way I was raised and that's the way I live my life.

Paula Deen

America, to me, is this enormous contrast between the heady idealism of founding fathers such as Thomas Jefferson, who said, 'All men are created equal,' and the reality that he was himself a slave owner.

Michael Portillo

I often compared myself with a slave. Slaves were taken forcibly from Africa, and so was I. Slaves were sold a couple of times on their way to their final destination, and so was I. Slaves suddenly were assigned to somebody they didn't choose, and so was I.

Mohamedou Ould Slahi

I now believe that evolution, or deevolution, never ends short of death, that no society has ever achieved an absolute pinnacle, that all humans are not created equal. In fact, I believe attempts to create some abstract equalization create a morass of injustices that rebound on the equalizers. Equal justice and equal opportunity are ideals we should seek, but we should recognize that humans administer the ideals and that humans do not have equal ability.