Today, April 13th, is Thomas Jefferson’s birthday, a man who has become one of the more polarizing figures in American history over the years.

In many ways, Jefferson helped conceive many liberal ideals that remain revered today. A titan of enlightenment thinking, Jefferson was centuries ahead of his time on issues like personal liberty and democracy. However, he was also a slave-owning member of the Southern landed gentry, an aristocratic baron whose participation in an inhumane economic system lasted his entire life.

However, while it may be impossible to unreservedly celebrate Jefferson, it’s nonetheless essential to remember him. In many ways, he personifies many of the contradictions inherent to American history. He was ardent and firm in his pursuit of liberty and justice even as he failed to address the most glaring example of their absence in his own society. He believed in big ideas and the redemptive qualities of humanity even as he actively participated in one of its cruelest institutions.

But the fact that some 200 years later, Dr. Martin Luther King would bellow out Jefferson’s own words from the steps of the Lincoln memorial while fighting for a justice and liberty his own people were deprived of through the legacy of slavery is more than telling. The ideas that Jefferson held dear would ultimately prove far bigger than his person. The partial redemption of his worst crimes is encapsulated in his writings and beliefs, even if it wouldn’t become clear until long after he was dead.

So, without forgetting that Jefferson’s personal history was rife with hypocrisy, let’s take a moment to remember the ideals that he spent his life advancing. Even if he frequently and unforgivably failed to live up to them in his own life, those ideals would ultimately prove to outlive him and blossom far beyond what he could have possibly imagined.

In that light, let’s reflect back on some of Jefferson’s wisest words, and how many of them remain utterly relevant today:

“When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

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, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

“A little rebellion now and then is a good thing and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.”

“I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”

“The legitimate powers of government extend to only such acts as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say that there are twenty gods, or no God.

“If I am to meet with a disappointment, the sooner I know it, the more of life I shall have to wear it off.”

“The glow of one warm thought is to me worth more than money.”

“When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property.”

“I find friendship to be like wine, raw when new, ripened with age, the true old man’s milk and restorative cordial.”

“No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden…But though an old man, I am but a young gardener.”

“This institution [University of Virginia] will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.

“Honesty is the first chapter of the book wisdom.”

“We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.”

“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.”

“Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry…”

“History, in general, only informs us what bad government is.”

In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.

Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.”

“Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.”

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people… They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.

“He who knows best knows how little he knows.”

“When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.”

“The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object.”

“It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.”

*This article was originally published on April 13, 2016.