"In the American Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson translated this idea into the famous words: "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..." What is interesting about this sentence is that "these truths" are anything but self-evident. They would have been regarded as subversive by Plato, who held that humanity is divided into people of gold, silver and bronze and that hierarchy is written into the structure of society.[7] They would have been incomprehensible to Aristotle who believed that some were born to rule and others to be ruled.[8] They are "self-evident" only to one steeped in the Bible."