Comparing The Works Of John Locke And Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson did not write the Declaration of Independence on his own, for much of his ideas were not his own but others. Indeed, there is ample evidence that he borrowed from the works of men such as John Locke and George Mason. The first man Thomas Jefferson likely borrowed work from was John Locke. John Locke talked about Two Treatises of Governments. In the preamble Thomas Jefferson speaks about the laws of nature and how all men need to have equal rights, which is very similar to what John Locke wrote. This shown when Thomas Jefferson writes that “Nature and of Nature's god entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind.” A similar statement can be found in the Two Treatises of Governments in which it is written that “ The state of nature is also equality” . This shows that Thomas Jefferson took John Locke's idea and reworded it and put it in the Declaration of Independence. The evidence and explanation show that he took a big idea of John Locke's writing and put it in his own. Even though Thomas wrote his paper by himself he took many ideas from other people and John died before it was written but Thomas could have read John's paper and took some ideas from him. John was a very good writer and there is

Thomas Jefferson borrowed George Mason’s idea about rights when he was writing The Declaration of Independence This is shown in Thomas Jefferson’s writing when he wrote “... with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”, for a similar text can be found in the the Virginia Declaration of Rights saying “...the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.”. This shows that borrowed the concepts of natural rights from George Mason as they both said almost the same thing about human