All men are created equal

The quotation "all men are created equal" is found in the United States Declaration of Independence. The final form of the sentence was stylized by Benjamin Franklin and penned by Thomas Jefferson during the beginning of the Revolutionary War in 1776. It reads: The phrase echoes the words of John Locke in his second treatise on government, and other authors as early as the 13th century. Jefferson applied the concept in his original draft of the declaration. It was thereafter quoted and incorporated into speeches by a wide array of substantial figures in American political and social life in the United States. It has been called an "immortal declaration", and "perhaps [the] single phrase" of the American Revolutionary period with the greatest "continuing importance." Origins The phrase is attested as early as pope Gregory the Great in book XXI of his Moralia in Job, and was picked up by Thomas Aquinas, Azo, Hervaeus Natalis, and other medieval thinkers. Thomas Jefferson, through his friendship with Marquis de Lafayette, was heavily influenced by French philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment, such as Voltaire, Rousseau and Montesquieu. In their often censored writings, those philosophers advocated that men were born free and equal. This later led to the French Revolution of 1789 and the concept of Human Rights (Droits de l'Homme in French). At the age of 33, Jefferson may have also borrowed the expression from an Italian friend and neighbor, Philip Mazzei, born in Prato, as noted by Joint Resolution 175 of the 103rd Congress as well as by John F. Kennedy in A Nation of Immigrants.In English history there exists earlier uses of nearly the same phrase. First by the medieval priest John Ball who at the outbreak of the 1381 Peasants Revolt in his famous sermon posited the question "When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?" and proclaimed "From the beginning all men by nature were created alike". In his 1690 work Second Treatise of Government the philosopher John Locke argues that in the "state of nature" that existed before the formation of governments all men were created equal. Another example is in John Milton's 1649 book called The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, written after the First English Civil War to defend the actions and rights of the Parliamentary cause, in the wake of the execution of king Charles I.