Thomas Jefferson

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that a biographical note ought to be brief, and that this one will not be. My subject is liberty in the abstract and government in the particular, chiefly the question of what the second may never do to the first. I retain a copy of every letter I have ever written, a practice my editors call thorough and my correspondents call ominous. I am advised that my columns would benefit from cuts. I have considered the suggestion at length, in writing, at rather greater length than the piece complained of. Readers who observe a distance between my principles and my own household are not mistaken, and I have never yet found a comfortable answer to give them.