Thomas Jefferson Quotes
It has been a source of great pain to me to have met with so many among [my] opponents who had not the liberality to distinguish between political and social opposition; who transferred at once to the person, the hatred they bore to his political opinions.
Jefferson, Thomas. "Letter to Richard M. Johnson, 10 March 1808." The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, edited by Andrew A. Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh, vol. 12, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1905, p. 9.
The cultural norms of Congress change from era to era. In the 1930s and 1940s members of Congress could not fly back to their home districts for weekends and many, like Truman, did not have their spouse in Washington. There was a camaraderie among Congressmen—even members of opposite parties or political enemies. Also, while there was much divisiveness on most domestic policy issues, there tended to be much bipartisanship on foreign policy and procedural matters. At the opposite extreme, in the first years of the 21st century, there was little or no socializing among Congress members and certainly little between party opponents. One party had vowed to block all legislation so that they could say the President did not accomplish anything and limit him to a single term, and the other party saw the situation as advantageous as they could blame the Congressional failure on the other party. Few people had friends with whom they disagreed politically.
Thomas Jefferson was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He had previously served as the second vice president of the United States under John Adams between 1797 and 1801. The principal author of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson was a proponent of democracy, republicanism, and individual rights, motivating American colonists to break from the Kingdom of Great Britain and form a new nation; he produced formative documents and decisions at both the state and national levels.
