Unconfirmed Quotations
by David Barton
is at:
http://www.wallbuilders.com/resources/search/detail.php?ResourceID=20


> Jon--could you provide info on the disavowal of bogus quotes by founders
> on
> religion that you mention?--Mick Nicholls
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jon Kukla" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Tuesday, November 15, 2005 12:19 PM
> Subject: quotations and bogus quotations
>
>
>> For what its worth, I too suspect its a bogus quote. It is amazing how
>> many of those are in circulation.
>>   About a dozen bogus quotes in which various of the founders spoke
>> about
>> Christianity - Henry included - have been disavowed by one of the
>> right-leaning sites that had promoted them in the 90s.
>>   More recently we've seen a scholastic poster marketed by a mainstream
>> educational company that attributes to Henry a "quotation" from Voltaire
>> - well actually another author's SUMMARY of something Voltaire wrote:
>> The familiar version ("I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend
>> to
>> the death your right to say it") attributed to the great French
>> philosophe
>> Voltaire was another writer's summary of Voltaire's whose actual words
>> in
>> a letter to M. le Riche, February 6, 1770: "I detest what you write, but
>> I
>> would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write."
>>
>> As others have noted, the quotation in question sounds a bit formulaic
>> and
>> aphoristic for Jefferson - but it could well be somebody else's summary
>> of
>> an attitude he might have expressed.  The advice itself, for example, is
>> not far off Jefferson's comment in a letter of 1803 to John Randolph of
>> Roanoke about "the reasonableness of mutual sacrifices of opinion among
>> those who are to act together, for any common object, and the expediency
>> of doing what good we can; when we cannot do all we would wish."
>>
>> By the way: my searches for the words "swim" and "principle" in the UVA
>> e-text center's online text of TJ's autobiography turn up no matches
>> with
>> the quote.
>>
>> Dr. Jon Kukla, Executive Vice-President
>> Red Hill - The Patrick Henry National Memorial
>> 1250 Red Hill Road
>> Brookneal, Virginia 24528
>> www.redhill.org
>>
>> > I was recently at a presentation where the speaker used an unfamiliar
>> > Jefferson quotation and I have had no luck tracking down its citation.
>> A
>> > Google search led to 359,000 sites, but alas none of them on the first
>> 5
>> > pages gives me a citation. I have also checked the Jefferson
>> Cyclopedia
>> > and
>> > staff at Monticello.
>> >
>> > Does anyone recognize this quotation and can you tell me from where it
>> > comes:
>> >
>> > "In matters of principle, stand like a rock; in matters of taste, swim
>> > with
>> > the current."
>> >
>> > Thanks,
>> > Robin Gabriel
>> > Director of Education
>> > Monticello
>> >
>>
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Dr. Jon Kukla, Executive Vice-President
Red Hill - The Patrick Henry National Memorial
1250 Red Hill Road
Brookneal, Virginia 24528
www.redhill.org
Phone 434-376-2044 or 800-514-7463

Fax 434-376-2647

- M. Lynn Davis, Office Manager
- Karen Gorham-Smith, Associate Curator
- Edith Poindexter, Curator

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