I don't doubt you Vetamur, but I would love to read your sources if possible, can you please post a link? When I post a quote that isn't actually attributed to the person I'm quoting, I absolutely want to know about it.

Matt Carson made up the one I've focused on for a book called On a Hill the call Capitol, or something like that. 2007. Outside of his book the quote is no where to be found. The conclusion is obvious.
The fear government quote was attributed to Jefferson suddenly in 1994, by Hatton? Hutton? But clearly is the same quote by John Basil Barnhill.
"the strongest reason" quote was debunked in200...5?3? By Mulloy his book on American extremism and militias.
Sorry, I'm using my phone at the moment not a pc so can't pull up details. That will give you enough to google with.
Conveserly, why not ask the guy quoting to show us where in Jefferson's writing he finds those quotes. 10 bucks says he can't, because they don't exist and he's copying and pasting from mass mailings.

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“If somebody thinks they're a hedgehog, presumably you just give them a mirror and a few pictures of hedgehogs and tell them to sort it out for themselves.”

Thanks Vet. I posted that because recently I had misquoted someone after seeing a quote on a cnn article and someone called me out on it. I found that they were right in calling me out, and it frustrated the hell out of me that I couldn't find a good website to verify quotes by Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, Lysander Spooner and the like. My education wasn't the best (mostly my own fault) and I have been attempting to rectify that recently, so I have been using the internet to educate myself.

I asked you to explain your source because I tend to find that people who challenge other posters to know more about a certain subject than the people who bring it up. I have learned more by being challenged than I have by being agreed with after all.

Once again, thanks for pointing out Malloy, however I can't help but notice that his book hasn't been rated at all on amazon. Is it a university textbook? It is also listed as the only textbook he has written. While note invalidating his opinion as an expert, it also doesn't lend him credence.

Also, the John Basil Barnhill quote seems to make sense to me, whether it came from Thomas Jefferson or from himself. I have always believed that you should judge an idea on its own merit, and not on the person it came from.

Don't have time for a proper reply.. Still on my phone. Two quick thinks: Mulloy has published two books , both mostly used as texts and is a professor of history at a Canadian university.

And yes, a quote or thought should be evaluated on its own merits, which should make us wonder all the more why people attribute quotes routinely to people who didn't say them, or outright make them up.

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“If somebody thinks they're a hedgehog, presumably you just give them a mirror and a few pictures of hedgehogs and tell them to sort it out for themselves.”

“The trouble with quotes on the Internet is that you can never know if they are genuine.” —Abraham Lincoln

Source: the Internet.

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I blog, I tweet. When I'm not writing or goofing around on Seahawks.NET.

Siinwest.. not to pick on you..when I shoud be picking on O-line who posted it..but just as a quick example.

He posted this:
"The beauty of the second amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it." -Thomas Jefferson

And this is when you KNOW its going to be a paste and copy job. Thomas Jefferson lived most of his life in the 18th century. The idiom "The beauty of......" is modern. To anyone used to reading historical documents it immediately smacks of anachronistic speech. Then the second half of the quote "it will not be needed until they try to take it".. again, its not the phrasing an 18th century person would use, and certainly isnt part of the thought process of the time. No one was thinking of a spectral "they" who would "take" the second amendment. The second amendment wasnt thought of something that could be "taken". It was the first quote that made me dig deeper the first time I saw it a number of years ago.

As I tried to express earlier.. when you see someone out quotes rather than their own ideas, and those quotes too neatly line up with the writers point of view, I would always be suspicious.

By the way, here is Mulloy. http://www.triuhistory.ca/darren-mulloy/ 2 books, professor.. youre going to have to go further if you want to rebutt him. And its easy.. simply produce the quote in Jeffersons writings..there arent that many of them.

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“If somebody thinks they're a hedgehog, presumably you just give them a mirror and a few pictures of hedgehogs and tell them to sort it out for themselves.”

I said "not to doubt you" because of the point you made in this post actually, most of the quotes he provided were too modern. However, that doesn't really mean that they didn't say something similar, and it has been slowly morphed into a more modern statement. It's hard to get an accurate quote 300 years after the person died. You make a good point about using quotes out of context to support their statements though, so I think i'll just leave them alone when giving my view from now on.

As for Mulloy... frankly, after reading the summaries of his books, they don't interest me enough to spend 40-50$ on them. Seems like in the summary that he is writing a book to point out how militia's (who tend to go to public schools) get a view of history that is distorted into what they want it to be. I'd rather just read a textbook giving the opposing viewpoints of various important historical figures, without the rhetoric of trying to point out how modern militia takes these viewpoints out of context to support their own world views.

Context is always important in trying to take lessons from history, but saying that we can't or shouldn't learn from historical figures because their time was so different from ours just smacks of being wrong to me. Maybe it's just because our political figures in the past seem so much more impressive to me than the ones we have today. They were all highly successful military, businessmen, lawyers, or professors and the like. Nowadays it seems like most of our political leaders know jack shit except how to get people to trust them enough to elect them. They work their whole lives in politics, and in executive positions. Now I'm getting off topic so I'll stop, but thanks for responding to my posts vet.