Thomas Jefferson - Blood of Patriots

This line is usually clipped to "the blood of patriots." Jefferson wrote more: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." He added that it is the tree's natural manure. The picture gives it whole.

He wrote it from Paris on November 13, 1787, to William Stephens Smith, an American diplomat in London. Jefferson was 44, serving as United States minister to France, when news reached him of Shays' Rebellion, the uprising of indebted farmers in western Massachusetts that had shut down courts in 1786 and 1787.

His answer was not to call for a crackdown. He argued that an occasional rebellion keeps rulers aware that the people will resist, and that the right remedy was to correct the people's mistaken facts and pardon them. It is a hard sentence, and Americans have argued over what it means ever since.

The picture sets a black profile of a man with his hair tied back against three worn bands of red, cream and navy. The quotation runs in cream serif type across the base of the silhouette, with his name beneath.