Quotation

“Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching.”

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Thomas Jefferson

Letter to Peter Carr

1785

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“ ‘Whenever you are to do a thing, though it can never be known but to yourself, ask yourself how you would act were all the world looking at you, and act accordingly’.

These are the words of advice that Thomas Jefferson wrote from Paris to his nephew Peter Carr.

While in France, Jefferson learned of the death of his youngest daughter, Lucy, from hooping cough. He insisted that the best way to protect her older sister, Mary, was to have her join him in France and asked that someone responsible should accompany the child.

The person chosen was fourteen-year-old Sally Hemings, a slave. Jefferson was then forty-four years old. He began a relationship with Sally soon after the arrived, and by the time she was sixteen, she was pregnant. It is likely that Jefferson fathered all six of Sally’s children. At first sight, the above quotation may seem like advice along the same lines as Jesus Christ’s ‘Do as you would be done by’. But in the light of Jefferson’s personal conduct it could be advice to take steps to avoid violating the so-called ‘Eleventh Commandment’: ‘Thou shalt not get caught’.”(LW in 1001 Questions – Life and Death | 33)

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Source photography from book 📖.

⬇️Thomas Jefferson was the third president of the United States.

His words here could be taken more than one way.