The series opener makes a single, startling claim: the truths the Declaration of Independence calls self-evident were not invented in Philadelphia. They were inherited — refined across more than two thousand years, in more than one civilization, by men who rarely knew one another. Jefferson himself said as much, naming Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, and Sidney as the “elementary books” behind the Declaration. This episode establishes that the Founders were readers before they were

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.