who said we hold these truths to be self evident

The phrase “we hold these truths to be self‑evident” is from the United States Declaration of Independence and is most closely associated with its primary author, Thomas Jefferson, though it was adopted and issued by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776.

Who actually “said” it?

• Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration’s preamble, including the line: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…”.

• The Continental Congress edited and then formally adopted the document, so the phrase can also be attributed collectively to the Congress that approved and issued it in 1776.

Where the line appears

• The sentence is part of the Declaration’s preamble, which sets out core political principles about equality and natural rights.

• This preamble has become one of the most quoted passages in American political thought and is often cited in discussions of human rights and democratic ideals.

What “self-evident” means here

• In the context of the Declaration, “self-evident” means truths that are considered so obvious and fundamental that they do not require further proof, such as the claim that “all men are created equal” and are endowed with certain rights.

• Jefferson and many Enlightenment thinkers treated these as first principles, basic assumptions on which the rest of their argument about government and rights was built.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.