"It would seem impossible that an intelligent people, with the faculty of reading, & right of thinking, could continue much longer to slumber under the pupilage of an interested aristocracy of priests & lawyers, persuading them to distrust themselves, & to let them think for them. I sincerely wish that your efforts may awaken them from this voluntary degradation of mind, restore them to a due estimate of themselves & their fellow citizens, and a just abhorrence of the falsehoods & artifices which have seduced them." - Thomas Jefferson, February 11, 1807.