Did Thomas Jefferson say: “When injustice becomes the law, resistance becomes a duty”?

The network is popular on the network that the third president of the United States is popular that a rebellion against unfair laws is not only the right, but also the obligation of every citizen. We decided to check if he said something like that.

Quote attributed to Thomas Jefferson, you can often find sites with collections aphorismsas well as in user publications on forums, in social networks ("VKontakte" X, Telegram, Facebook*) and on the blog-platforms (Livejournal, "Zen"). The formulations in the publications are slightly different (for example, the “debt” is replaced ”duty"), But the general meaning does not change. Often the phrase can be found in discussions on political topics.

Thomas Jefferson - The third US president and the key author of the Declaration of Independence. The works of one of the founding fathers after his death in 1826 were carefully studied, and most of them were digitized. The most complete collections of Jefferson's texts, including letters, and both sent by him and received from other addressees, are stored in Princeton University, National Archive of the United States And Congress library. None of these meetings could find a disassembled quote.

But she was found on site Thomas Jefferson Foundation - a non -profit organization based on the aim of maintaining the heritage of the politician and located in his residence of Monticello in the state of Virginia. True, the quote there is marked as the attributed to Jefferson erroneously. According to the fund, for the first time the politician was indicated as the author of the statement only in 2006, 180 years after death, in Richard Doyle’s book “Save men: common sense in matters of the family and gender”. However, already in the next editors, published in 2007, there was no such quote. Perhaps the author realized that he was mistaken in the attribution, and removed the phrase.

In 2012, a statement attracted attention Barry Popka - an American specialist in etymology, who acted as a consultant to many authoritative reference books, for example, the "Oxford Dictionary of the English language." He also did not find any evidence that Jefferson had any relation to this phrase. Moreover, he found several examples of using it at all without indicating authorship decades before Doyle, apparently, was the first to attribute it to the third president of the United States. So, back in the early 1980s, the phrase with insignificant differences in the wording was used by political activists from Germany and Australia.

At the same time in Independence declarationsIn the creation of which Jefferson played a key role, there are such lines: “... when a long series of abuses and usurpations, invariably pursuing the same goal, finds the intention to subordinate them (people. - Ed.) Absolute despotism, their right, their obligation to reset such a government.” The wording differs very significantly from the analysis of the phrase, but the general meaning is quite close. 

Thus, Thomas Jefferson is not related to the common quote about the duty of citizens to resist the unfair laws and the authorities adopting them. It began to be attributed to him only almost two centuries after death, earlier it was found without attribution. In the Declaration of Independence of the United States, to which Jefferson made a significant contribution, there are lines about the right of the people to an uprising, but they differ significantly from the dispersed formulation. 

*The Russian authorities consider Meta Platforms Inc., which owns social networks Facebook and Instagram, an extremist organization, its activities in Russia are prohibited.

Photo on the cover: Rembrandt Peale, Public Domain, Via Wikimedia Commons

Incorrect attribution of quote

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

1. Snopes. No Evidence Jefferson Said: 'When Injustice Becomes Law, Resistance Becomes Duty'
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