Jefferson Quotes

“He knew taking money was wrong. His nannan had told him never to steal. He didn’t want to steal. But he didn’t have a solitary dime in his pocket.”

“tell them im strong tell them im a man good by mr wigin.”

“And that’s all we are, Jefferson, all of us on this earth, a piece of drifting wood, until we—each one of us, individually—decide to become something else.”

“Cause I’m go’n die soon? That make me a man, Mr. Wiggins?”

“I don’t know what you’re going to say when you go back in there. But tell them he was the bravest man in that room today.”

“Y’all asking a lot, Mr. Wiggins, from a poor old n***** who never had nothing.”

“They sentence you to death because you were at the wrong place at the wrong time, with no proof that you had anything at all to do with the crime other than being there when it happened. Yet six months later they come and unlock your cage and tell you, We, us, white folks all, have decided it’s time for you to die, because this is a convenient date and time.”

“Me, Mr. Wiggins. Me. Me to take the cross. Your cross, nannan’s cross, my own cross. Me, Mr. Wiggins. This old stumbling n*****. Y’all axe a lot, Mr. Wiggins.”

“It may be that without a vision men shall die. It is no less true that, without hard practical sense, they shall also die. Without Jefferson the new nation might have lost its soul. Without Hamilton it would assuredly have been killed in body.”