[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 44, Number 15 (Monday, April 21, 2008)]
[Pages 520-521]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks Honoring President Thomas Jefferson's 265th Birthday

April 14, 2008

    Thank you all. Thanks for coming. Please be seated. Welcome to the 
White House. Laura and I are so honored you are here. I welcome members 
of my Cabinet, Members of the United States Senate, folks who work in 
the White House, the Governor of Virginia and Anne Holton. Thank you all 
for coming. We're really happy you're here.
    We're here tonight to commemorate the 265th birthday of Thomas 
Jefferson, here in a room where he once walked and in a home where he 
once lived. In this house, President Jefferson spread the word that 
liberty was the right of every individual. In this house, Jefferson sent 
Lewis and Clark off on the mission that helped make America a 
continental nation. And in this house, Jefferson was known to receive 
guests in his bathrobe and slippers. [Laughter] Laura said, ``No.'' 
[Laughter] I don't have a bathrobe. [Laughter]
    With a single sentence, Thomas Jefferson changed the history of the 
world. After countless centuries, when the powerful and the privileged 
governed as they pleased, Jefferson proclaimed as a self-evident truth 
that liberty was a right given to all people by an Almighty.
    Here in America, that truth was not fully realized in Jefferson's 
own lifetime. As he observed the condition of slaves in America, 
Jefferson said, quote, ``I tremble for my country when I reflect that 
God is just [and] that His justice cannot sleep forever.'' Less than 40 
years after his death, justice was awakened in America and a new era of 
freedom dawned.
    Today, on the banks of the Tidal Basin, a statue of Thomas Jefferson 
stands in a rotunda that is a memorial to both the man and the ideas 
that built this Nation. There, on any day of the week, you will find men 
and women of all creeds, colors, races, and religions. You will find 
scholars, schoolchildren, and visitors from every part of our country. 
And you will find each of them looking upward in quiet reflection on the 
liturgy of freedom, the words of Thomas Jefferson inscribed on the 
memorial's walls.
    The power of Jefferson's words do not stop at water's edge. They 
beckon the friends of liberty on even the most distant shores. They're a 
source of inspiration for people in young democracies like Afghanistan 
and Lebanon and Iraq. And they are a source of hope for people in 
nations like Belarus and Burma, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Syria, North 
Korea, and Zimbabwe, where the struggle for freedom continues.
    Thomas Jefferson left us on July 4th, 1826, 50 years to the day 
after our Declaration of Independence was adopted. In one of the great 
harmonies of history, his friend and rival John Adams died on the very 
same day. Adams's last words were, ``Thomas Jefferson survives.'' And he 
still does today, and he will live on forever, because the desire to 
live in freedom is the eternal hope of mankind.
    And now it's my pleasure to welcome Wilfred McClay to the stage.

Note: The President spoke at 6:05 p.m. in the East Room at the White 
House. In his remarks, he referred to Gov. Timothy M. Kaine of Virginia 
and his wife, Anne Holton; and Wilfred M. McClay, SunTrust Bank chair of 
excellence in humanities and professor of history, University of

[[Page 521]]

Tennessee at Chattanooga. The transcript released by the Office of the 
Press Secretary also included the remarks of the First Lady.