Thomas Jefferson — Stand Like a Rock

"On matters of style, swim with the current; on matters of principle, stand like a rock." The sentence is quoted as Thomas Jefferson's in business books, sermons and campaign speeches, and it reads like him — balanced, aphoristic, a little cool.

It is not in his hand. The researchers at Monticello have searched Jefferson's letters, notebooks and published papers and have found no trace of it; the earliest appearances are twentieth-century. The attribution is unsupported, and this poster carries it as a saying in his name rather than a documented quotation.

The principle it describes was real enough. Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence at thirty-three and spent the next fifty years refusing to soften its first sentence.

The layout mirrors the sentence. Heavy red sans-serif fills the sheet edge to edge, with the small word "on" set between two rules at the center like a hinge. Above it, style; below it, principle. Behind the type, a faint powder-blue silhouette of Jefferson faces left, almost lost under the lettering. The eye reads down through the red and finishes on "a rock," the largest words on the page.