Meaning

This phrase from the Declaration of Independence asserts that human equality is not a conclusion arrived at by argument but a starting point that requires no proof. By calling the truth self-evident, Jefferson is placing equality among those things that reasonable people will recognize simply by reflecting on them. The sentence has served as a moral touchstone in American life ever since, invoked to challenge exclusions and expand the circle of those the nation's ideals are meant to protect.

Context

The Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, as a formal statement of why the colonies were breaking from British rule. Jefferson was the primary author, though the document was revised by the committee and by Congress before adoption. This particular sentence appears in the opening philosophical section, which lays out the principles the rest of the document rests on. Later generations, including abolitionists and civil rights leaders, repeatedly returned to this sentence to argue that America had not yet lived up to its own founding promise.

About the author

Thomas Jefferson was a Virginia planter, lawyer, and statesman who served in a number of important roles during and after the Revolution, including as the second American minister to France and the third President of the United States. He was a prolific writer and thinker with wide-ranging intellectual interests. His legacy is deeply complicated by the fact that he enslaved hundreds of people over the course of his life, a reality that stands in sharp tension with the equality his most famous words proclaim.