America 250 Years

‘We Hold These Truths ...’: The Sentence That Shaped America and Changed the World

One document played a principle part in forming a nation and changing the world—the Declaration of Independence.
‘We Hold These Truths ...’: The Sentence That Shaped America and Changed the World
“Foundation of the American Government,” 1925, by John Henry Hintermeister. George Washington witnesses Gouverneur Morris sign the Constitution while Madison sits in front of Benjamin Franklin and next to Robert Morris, Public Domain
Jeff Minick
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“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
In his recent book “The Greatest Sentence Ever Written,” historian and biographer Walter Isaacson declares that sentence from the Declaration of Independence to be “the greatest sentence ever crafted by human hand.”
Jeff Minick
Jeff Minick
Author
Jeff Minick has four children and a growing platoon of grandchildren. For 20 years, he taught history, literature, and Latin to seminars of homeschooling students in Asheville, N.C. He is the author of two novels, “Amanda Bell” and “Dust on Their Wings,” and two works of nonfiction, “Learning as I Go” and “Movies Make the Man.” Today, he lives and writes in Front Royal, Va.