Jefferson Louisiana Purchase Quotes & Sayings

The broadening of the economic order which came to be seated in the individual property owner ... dramatized by Jefferson's purchase of the Louisiana Territory ... The supremacy of corporate economic power ... consolidated by the Supreme Court decision of 1886 which declared that the Fourteenth Amendment protected the corporation ... [the New Deal, leading to], within the political arena, as well as in the corporate world itself, competing centers of power that challenged those of the corporate directors. — C. Wright Mills

But then in all his words if not deeds Jefferson was so beautifully human, so eminently vague, so entirely dishonest but not in any meretricious way. Rather it was a passionate form of self-delusion that rendered Jefferson as president and as man (not to mention as writer of tangled sentences and lunatic metaphors) confusing even to his admirers. Proclaiming the unalienable rights of man for everyone (excepting slaves, Indians, women and those entirely without property), Jefferson tried to seize the Floridas by force, dreamed of a conquest of Cuba, and after his illegal purchase of Louisiana sent a military governor to rule New Orleans against the will of its inhabitants. — Gore Vidal