With all due respect to I think, therefore I am, and go ahead, make my day, and maybe even let there be light, the Declaration of Independence contains a sentence that has inspired

Americans and all believers in freedom and democracy for centuries. From KERA in Dallas,

this is Think. I'm Chris Boyd. It is actually the second sentence in the Declaration, the one that

reads, 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.

Even if we have that elegant statement committed to memory,

not all of us have thought through

what Thomas Jefferson and his colleagues actually meant by it.

So my guest has written a delightful little book to help us do that. Walter Isaacson is professor

of history at Tulane University and was CEO of the Aspen Institute, chair of CNN, and editor

of Time. He was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2023, and his newest book is called

The Greatest Sentence Ever Written.

Walter, welcome back to think.

Hey, thank you.

It's good to be back with you all.

Taken as a whole, what is it you love about that particular sentence?

I think it's a mission statement, especially in these troubled times when we're about to have

our 250th birthday, and we've become so divided. You know, we're about to have our 250th birthday and we become so divided

we're going to have to go through Thanksgiving and the holidays all having to talk to each other

and for our 250th if we can remember what we're aspiring to be as a nation and appreciate those words we kind of, as you said,

have half memorized, but we don't reflect on what does each word really mean.

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