“...all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”

- Excerpted from Preamble of the Declaration of Independence

While there is plenty of great stuff in the Declaration of Independence, I think this passage, so little quoted, offers real & fundamental insight into how Jefferson, and the other Founders thought about human nature*. It's the one piece you can remove from all the surrounding political context, still have it stand up and be incredibly useful in addressing human generated problems. The great bit is that it puts this very dry observation of basic human nature into a document that declares that it's ever persons Right and Duty to change their own circumstances. Powerful stuff this Enlightenment Juice. The implications this observation has for self reflection is massive; within social contexts you can multiply the implications by a few orders of magnitude.

* Can someone clarify if it was John Adams who authored the Preamble section and not Jefferson for me...