I finished reading this book, and almost instantly started re-reading it and listening to the audiobook version of it. It's phenomenal, insightful, and engaging.

Here are my notes, quotes, and ideas:

I loved this quote from John F. Kennedy that preceded the Table of Contents, given during a dinner to honor Nobel laureates:

I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.

The prologue opens, "He awoke at first light." That's certainly something I hope can be written about me one day.

Also: "He loved his wife, his books, his farms, good wine, architecture, Homer, horseback riding, history, France, the Commonwealth of Virginia, spending money, and the very latest in ideas and insights."

And: "A philosopher and a scientist, a naturalist and a historian, Jefferson was a man of the Enlightenment, always looking forward, consumed by the quest for knowledge. He adored detail, noting the temperature each day and carrying a tiny, ivory-leaved notebook in his pocket to track his daily expenditures."

The extent of Jefferson's knowledge can be understood through this anecdote:

A guest at a country inn was said to have once struck up a conversation...whom the stranger did not recognize. The two covered subject after subject, and the unremarkable traveler was "perfectly acquainted with each." Afterward, "filled with wonder," the guest asked the landlord who this extraordinary man was. When the topic was the law, the traveller said, "he thought he was a lawyer"; when it was medicine, he "felt sure he was a physician"; when it was theology, "he became convinced that he was a clergyman."

"Thomas Jefferson was the most successful political figure of the first half century of the American republic. For thirty-six of the forty years between 1800 and 1840, either Jefferson or a self-described adherent of his served as president of the United States."

I thought this was a unique definition of power:

In pursuit of his ends, Jefferson sought, acquired, and wielded power, which is the bending of the world to one's will, the remaking of reality in one's own image. Our greatest leaders are neither dreamers nor dictators. They are, like Jefferson, those who articulate national aspirations yet master the mechanics of influence and know when to depart from dogma.

[...]

He dreamed big but understood that dreams become reality only when their champions are strong enough and wily enough to bend history to their purposes. Broadly put, philosophers think; politicians maneuver. Jefferson's genius was that he was both and could do both, often simultaneously. Such is the art of power.

[...]

Jefferson was the rare leader who stood out from the crowd without intimidating it. His bearing gave him unusual opportunities to make the thoughts in his head the work of his hands, transforming the world around him from what it was to what he thought it ought to be.

"It is a charming thing to be loved by everybody and the way to obtain it is, never to quarrel or be angry with anybody." – Jefferson #quotes

The author gives a good warning for reading history: "If we are to understand what he was like, and what life was like for him, then we must see the world as he saw it, not as how we know it turned out."

"It is the strong in body who are both the strong and free in mind." – Peter Jefferson, TJ's father. #quotes

"The most fortunate of us all in our journey through life frequently meet with calamities and misfortunes which may greatly afflict us. To fortify our minds against the attacks of these calamities and misfortunes should be one of the principal studies and endeavors of our lives."

I loved this definition of immaturity from Kant. I've never heard it put like this before:

Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another.

My personal summation of this quote: Immaturity is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another. #quotes #immaturity #maturity #mature #independence

responsibility

(I also notice how Kant wrote this in the style of a statute. He uses "self-imposed" and "immaturity" in the "rule" and then defines what both of those factors are, as if they are "sub-rules." Such is the style of writing—and reading and learning—I must attain if I am to excel in the practice of law.)

"For Jefferson laziness was a sin. 'Of all the cankers of human happiness, none corrodes it with so silent, yet so baneful, a tooth, as indolence,' he told one of his daughters. Time spent at study was never wasted. 'Knowledge,' Jefferson said, 'indeed is a desirable, a lovely possession.'"

Jefferson believed in rigorous exercised, despite the weather.

"Not less than two hours a day should be devoted to exercise, and the weather should be little regarded," Jefferson once said. In fact, Jefferson believed the rainier and the colder the better. "A person not sick will not be injured by getting wet," he said. "It is but taking a cold bath, which never gives a cold to any one. Brute animals are the most healthy, and they are exposed to all weather, and of men, those are healthiest who are the most exposed."

Thomas Jefferson, the original David Goggins.

Jefferson believed in rigorous study, but also attaining a wide breadth of knowledge.

Aspiring attorneys, he said, should devote their mornings to the law, but variety was key. "Having ascribed proper hours to exercise, divide what remain (I mean of your vacant hours) into three portions. Give the principal to history, the other two, which should be shorter, to Philosophy and Poetry."

Noted.

While the roots of revolution were stirring in the colonies, and in Jefferson's heart and mind, he understood "Leadership" to be "knowing how to distill complexity into a comprehensible message to reach the hearts as well as the minds of the larger world."

From the author:

Politicians often talk too much and listen too little, which can be self-defeating, for in many instances the surer route to winning a friend is not to convince them that you are right but that you care what they think. Everyone wants to believe that what they have to say is fascinating, illuminating, and possibly even epochal. The best political figures create the impression that they find everyone they encounter to be what Abigail Adams said Jefferson was: "one of the choice ones of the earth."

This is a good lesson for me as a start law school, and am potentially am put in positions to mediate conflicts in a few years.

"Harmony in the marriage state is the very first object to be aimed at." – Jefferson #quotes #marriageAdvice

He always wrote to his daughter:

Much better...if our companion views a thing in a light different from what we do, to leave him in quite possession of his view. What is the use of rectifying him if the thing be unimportant; and if important let it pass for the present, and wait a softer moment and more conciliatory occasion of revising the subject together.

Lesson: Choose your battles; if the battle is worth fighting, do it not in the heat of the moment for tempers are often flared.

In A Summary View of the Rights of British America, Jefferson laid stake to his identity of a revolutionary, clear thinker, and leader.

As 1774 drew to a close, Jefferson—at thirty-one years old, a husband, father, lawyer, planter, legislator, and thinker—had moved to a new, higher rank of political skill. The Summary View and his other pieces demonstrated a capacity to reflect and advance the sentiments of his public simultaneously, giving his audience both a vision of the future and a concrete sense that he knew how to bring the distant closer to hand, and dreams closer to reality.

"TJ's writings pushed him into a new echelon of political leadership. Such is the power of clear thinking, writing, and publishing your views," I wrote in the margin.

Jefferson's purpose in writing the Declaration of Independence was, "not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of...but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject; in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent state we were compelled to take."

Jefferson wasn't a failed governor of Virginia, but he definitely wasn't at his best. When the Redcoats invaded, he retreated, and the people didn't like this very much, and they let him know it.

Jefferson wasn't happy with the public critiques. He wrote: "If you meant to escape malice you should have confined yourself within the sleepy line of regular duty. When you transgressed this and enterprised deeds which will hand down your name with honor to future times, you made yourself a mark for malice and envy to shoot at. Of these things there is enough both in and out of office."

"Anguish is the price a public man paid for adulation," writes Meacham.

In response to Washington asking Jefferson to be the first Secretary of State, Jefferson once again battled with his desire to greatness and fear of ridicule. Meacham writes:

Jefferson was daunted, and said so, admitting that he feared the "critcisms and censures of a public just indeed in their intentions, but sometimes misinformed and misled, and always too respectable to be neglected."

He was trapped in a familiar paradox. Devoted to the stage and anxious for applause, Jefferson feared failure and disapproval.

When Jefferson was elected to Congress, he placed the care of his daughter in the hands of a Mrs. Hopkins, but distant father he was not. He expected Patsy to follow a strict regiment:

With respect to the distribution of your time, the following is what I should approve:

From 8 to 10 o'clock, practice music. From 10 to 1, dance one day and draw another. From 1 to 2, draw on the day you dance, and write a letter the next day. From 3 to 4, read French. From 4 to 5, exercise yourself in music. From 5 till bed-time, read English, write, etc.

I wonder what the difference between "practice music" and "exercise yourself in music" was?

He wrote something similar to his nephew Peter Carr:

You are now old enough to know how very important to your future life will be the manner in which you employ your present time.

There was little Jefferson valued in life more than independent thought. He wrote:

I am not a Federalist, because I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven with a party, I would not go there at all. Therefore I protest to you I am not of the party of federalists. But I am much farther from that of the Antifederalists.

Although Jefferson wanted things in the country to be a little different—and he let people know that's how he felt—he realized that nothing good could happen overnight. He wrote in a letter to Reverend Charles Clary in 1790:

[Y]ou are too well informed a politician, too good a judge of men, not to know that the ground of liberty is to be gained by inches, that we must be contended to serve what we can get from time to time, and eternally press forward for what is yet to get.

That's a good philosophy for life: Always strive, always be working toward getting better in your work, your life, your health, you education, etc., but don't expect anything to happen overnight. "Eternally press forward for what is yet to get."

While Hamilton was fighting for a national bank, Jefferson fought back. When Washington asked Jefferson's opinion on the constitutionality of the bank bill, he wrote:

To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition.

Jefferson embodied a principal that many great leaders have: he was unrelenting on the end, but compromised on the means. "Like significant politicians before him, Jefferson was devoted to an overarching vision, but governed according to circumstance."

Jefferson had decorated the walls of his quarters with a collection of portraits that included Sir Francis Bacon, John Locke, and Sir Isaac Newton, all men of the Enlightenment. Hamilton asked Jefferson who they were. "I told him they were my trinity of the three greatest men the world had ever produced, naming them," Jefferson recalled.

One thing I learned reading history, is that the South wanted to secede long before 1860. It was a constant tension. Meacham writes, "He was thinking of the calamitous possibility of souther secession to protest Federalist dominance. 'I can scarcely contemplate a more incalculable evil than the breaking of the union into two or more parts,' Jefferson said, yet if Northern interests were to predominate, it would become impossible to say what might happen."

Jefferson made a prescient observation about the American public and the presidency when he said, "well I know that no man will ever bring out of that office the reputation which carries him into it."

Brilliant.

There were rare moments in Jefferson's life when he recorded his philosophy on life, work, and politics. Often, they were in letters of advice to his children, like earlier when he wrote a detailed schedule for Patsy to follow. Others were in letters to his grandchildren, like in this letter to his grandson when he gave, what I think, is one of the most important and valuable lessons anyone can learn and follow in life.

He wrote, "A determination never to do what is wrong, prudence, and good humor, will go far towards securing to you the estimation of the world." Good humor "is the practice of sacrificing to those whom we meet in society all the little conveniences and preferences which will gratify them, and deprive us of nothing worth a moment's consideration; it is the giving a pleasing and flattering turn to our expressions which will conciliate others and make them pleased with us as well as themselves. How cheap a price for the good will of another!"

I could name about five people who always have "little conveniences and preferences which will gratify them" and deprive me of nothing, and I try to let them have their way, but I admit it is very hard.

He went on:

When this is in return for a rude thing said by another, it brings him to his senses, it mortifies and corrects him in the most salutary way, and places him at the feet of your good nature in the eyes of the company. But in strange prudential rules for our government in society, I must not omit the important one of never entering into dispute or argument with another. I never yet saw an instance of one or two disputants convincing the other by argument. I have seen many, on their getting warm, becoming rude, and shooting on another. Conviction is the effect of our own dispassionate reasoning, either in solitude, or weighing within ourselves dispassionately what we hear from others standing uncommitted in argument with ourselves. It was one of the rules which above all others made Doctr. Franklin the most amiable men in society, "never to contradict anybody."

This is all brilliant advice. Everyone working with other people in any capacity should read this passage every single day.

Thomas Jefferson said a lot in his inaugural address, but one line stuck with me: "Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle."

I don't think a lot of people understand that. Just because someone disagrees about how something should be done, why something should be done, or when something should be done does not mean they are the enemy. People who want to see the same things in the world can disagree about all of the little steps and work required to get there.

Jefferson's presidential routine was gruesome; working for ten to thirteen hours a day at his writing table, doing paperwork and receiving callers from early morning until midday. "It was only at night—and it was the rare night—that he spent time on the 'mechanics, mathematics, philosophy, etc.' that he loved."

Regardless of the political environment and business, Jefferson found some time to continue the intellectual pursuits he so loved. For example, during the heat of the battle of the Louisiana Purchase, he closed a letter to Joseph Priestley with, "Have you seen the new work of Malthus on population? It is one of the ablest I have ever seen." Meacham writes, "How like Jefferson—amid the greatest of possible events affecting every aspect of American life and beyond, he was reading Malthus."

Benjamin Rush helped Jefferson form his views on church and state in 1800. "'I agree with you likewise in your wishes to keep religion and government independent of one another. Were it possible for St. Paul to rise from his grave at the present juncture, he would say to the clergy who are now so active in settling the political affairs of the world: "Cease from your political labors your kingdom is not of this world. Read my epistles. In no part of them will you perceive me aiming to depose a pagan emperor, or to place a Christian upon a throne. Christianity disdains to receive support from human governments."'"

Thomas Jefferson was the perfect person to execute the Louisiana Purchase. "The story of the Louisiana Purchase is one of strength, of Jefferson's adaptability and, most important, his determination to secure the territory from France, doubling the size of the country and transforming the United States into a continental power. A slower or less courageous politician might have bungled the acquisition; an overly idealistic one might have lost it by insisting on strict constitutional scruples. Jefferson, however, was neither slow nor weak nor overly idealistic."

The constitutional question was huge. There was a big debate around whether Jefferson had the power to do what he did with the Louisiana Purchase, or whether it should have been Congress' job. I think he did a good job of keeping it on the down low until the deal was essentially over, at which point, it was kind of too late for anyone to stop it or undo it.

Part of Jefferson's busy schedule including having dinner guests at the President's House. This wasn't a part of some desire to retreat from the realities of the world and have a drink and a meal, though; these dinners, like most things Jefferson did, had a reason. Meacham writes:

Jefferson believed, too, that sociability was essential to republicanism. Men who liked and respected and enjoyed one another were more likely to cultivate the virtuous habits that would enable the country's citizens to engage in "the pursuit of happiness." An affectionate man living in harmony with his neighbors was more likely to understand the mutual sacrifice of opinion of which Jefferson had spoken, and to make those sacrifices.

There was, of course, a more immediate point to frequent gatherings of lawmakers, diplomats, and cabinet officers at the president's table. It tends to be more difficult to oppose—or at least vilify—someone with whom you have broken bread.

During these meetings, Jefferson made sure to include everybody in the conversation. Rank and prestige were words that Jefferson didn't know existed. At one conversation, with someone who had lived in Europe for awhile, felt out of place. Noticing this, Jefferson praised him for the rice he sent from Algiers in front of the whole crowd. "With a stroke of grace," Meacham writes, "Jefferson had transformed an unnoticed guest into what Mrs. Smith called 'a person of importance,' and the president fulfilled the most fundamental duty of a host: he showed respect to those under his roof, making them feel comfortable and cared for."

Jefferson, though a lawyer, saw the law for what it is, a means to an end for preserving liberty and freedom. "A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law, would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property, and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means."

Jefferson realized he had enemies, but to him, enemies were simply a by-product of affecting change. "I suppose indeed that in public life a man whose political principals have any decided character, and who has energy enough to give them effect, must always expect to encounter political hostility from those of adverse principles."

My interpretation is that, if you don't have any enemies or people you're upsetting, you're not standing for anything.

When Jefferson left the presidency, no one would have blamed him for laying low and relaxing, except, perhaps, Jefferson himself. On a visit to Monticello in 1809, Margaret Bayard Smith wrote, "The sun never sees him in bed, and his mind designs more than the day can fulfill, even his long day." Yet the work, he loved; "There is a tranquility about him, which an inward peace could alone bestow."

After spending years immersed in politics, he was not interested in reading about it. "I feel a much greater interest in knowing what has passed two or three thousand years ago, than what is now passing," he wrote in 1819. "I read nothing, therefore, but of the heroes of Troy . . . of Pompey and Caesar, and of Augustus too." He loved, he said, the "ineffable luxury of being owner of my own time."

During the time at Monticello, Jefferson and Adams began conversing again through letters. They rekindled their friendship, repaired old wounds, and just, sort of, chatted. However, they steered clear of politics. "For with the commonplace topic of politics, we do not meddle. When there are so many others on which we agree why should we introduce the only one on which we differ?"

That's a great philosophy for life, friendship, and conversation.

Jefferson loved innovation. "The fact is that one new idea leads to another, that to a third and so on through a course of time, until someone, with whom no one of these ideas was original, combines all together, and produces what is justly called a new invention."

Jefferson loved education. "I think by far the most important bill in our whole code is that for the diffusion of knowledge among the people. No other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom and happiness."

He also wrote one of his famous letters filled with advice on living a virtuous life. "Adore God. Reverence and cherish your parents. Love your neighbor as yourself, and your country more than yourself. Be just. Be true. Murmur not at the ways of Providence. [I think that's saying to not complain about things you can't control, or that happened to you.] So shall the life into which you have entered be the portal to one of eternal and ineffable bliss."

He also included "A DECALOGUE OF CANONS FOR OBSERVATION IN PRACTICAL LIFE."

1. Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.
2. Never trouble another for what you can do yourself.
3. Never spend money before you have it.
4. Never buy what you don not want, because it is cheap; it will be dear to you.
5. Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst, and cold.
6. We never repent of having eaten too little.
7. Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.
8. How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened.
9. Take things always by their smooth handle.
10. When angry, count ten, before you speak; if very angry, a hundred.

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Books mentioned

• History of England by Paul de Rapin-Thoyras
• "What is Enlightenment?" by Kant
• Political Disquisitions by James Burgh -