“I have received the favor of your letter of August 17th, and with it the volume you were so kind as to send me on the Literature of Negroes. Be assured that no person living wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a complete refutation of the doubts I have myself entertained and expressed on the grade of understanding allotted to them by nature, and to find that in this respect they are on a par with ourselves. My doubts were the result of personal observation on the limited sphere of my own State, where the opportunities for the development of their genius were not favorable, and those of exercising it still less so. I expressed them therefore with great hesitation; but whatever be their degree of talent it is no measure of their rights. Because Sir Isaac Newton was superior to others in understanding, he was not therefore lord of the person or property of others. On this subject they are gaining daily in the opinions of nations, and hopeful advances are making towards their reestablishment on an equal footing with the other colors of the human family.”
I pray you therefore to accept my thanks for the many instances you have enabled me to observe of respectable intelligence in that race of men, which cannot fail to have effect in hastening the day of their relief; [...].
Letter to Henri Grégoire http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/mtj:@field(DOCID+@lit(tj110052)) (25 February 1809), as quoted in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes. Federal Edition. Collected and Edited by Paul Leicester Ford. Also quoted in The Science and Politics of Racial Research by William H. Tucker (1994), p. 11
1800s, Second Presidential Administration (1805-1809)
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Thomas Jefferson 456
3rd President of the United States of America 1743–1826Related quotes
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2010s
In a letter to the Duke Alfonso of Ferrara, From Venice, April 1, 1518; as quoted by J.A.Y. Crowe & G.B. Cavalcaselle in Titian his life and times - With some account ..., publisher John Murray, London, 1877, p. 181-82
1510-1540
Source: How to Become President (1940), Ch. 1 : Government jobs pay big money
Context: As we walk hand in hand through the pathways of knowledge, remember that I am giving you freely and without stint the full accumulation of my two months’ experience as a candidate. I have on file a complete record of everything I’ve said and done. Ever since I threw my hat in the ring I have had myself shadowed, and the results were very entertaining. The things that go on in those back rooms, you wouldn’t believe.
So now we begin our journey together. If you follow these instructions carefully, you will find that every step of your progress, like the path that climbs up and up from the sheltered valley, offers you an ever-wider and more facinating vista, until at last you come out upon the summit of the wrong hill.
Ch. VII, Social Problems in the Forest, p. 130 https://archive.org/stream/ontheedgeofthepr007259mbp#page/n163/mode/2up (1924 translation by Ch. Th. Campion); Schweitzer later repudiated such statements, saying "The time for speaking of older and younger brothers has passed.", as quoted in [Forrow, Lachlan, Foreword, Russell, C.E.B., African Notebook, Syracuse University Press, Albert Schweitzer library, 2002, 978-0-8156-0743-4, http://books.google.com/books?id=qa-TVXEkY3sC&pg=PR13, 23 June 2017, xiii]
Variant:
The African is my brother — but he is my younger brother by several centuries.
As quoted in The Observer (23 October 1955)
On the Edge of the Primeval Forest (1922)
Sherilyn Fenn, quoted in "'Three of Hearts' may be Fenn's winning card", by Nancy Mills. Boston Herald (USA). April 25, 1993. p. 41
Letter to George Washington (July 1778)