I had the privilege in 1994
becoming the
Dean of the University of Virginia School of Architecture 
and as such
I got to live in a house designed by Thomas Jefferson.
And when you live in a house designed by
Jefferson you think of him as your 
architect. And clearly he thought himself
as a designer first
because all you have to do is look at
his tombstone and you'll see
his last design.  That it records only the
things he designed.
It says, Thomas Jefferson author the
of the Declaration of the American Independence
statute of Virginia for religious
freedom
which became the Bill of Rights and
father of the University of Virginia
That's it.  Any missing? Can you imagine being
president twice?
And it's not important enough to put on your
tombstone. What is he doing here?
He is recording his legacies, not his
activities. He's not mentioning his
jobs. He's recording his designs,
the things he left behind, his legacies.
and if we look at the Declaration of
Independence written
16 days, by a 33-year-old, what we find
is life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness. Can you imagine that? If we all
spent 16 days talking
to each other, do you think we'd come up with life, 
liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
Have you heard anybody in Washington
talking about happiness lately?
No. This is an astonishing mind.
And his understanding of
legacy was quite clear he and Madison
communicated regularly about it in 1789
he wrote James Madison a letter
explaining why he thought federal
bonding authority, the funding
of our government, should be the term
of
one generation his mind, which was
nineteen years ago.
And his logic was this, he said "The earth
belongs to the living
no man me but natural right
oblige the lands he owns are occupies
to debts greater than those that may be
paid during his own lifetime
because if it could the world would
belong to
the dead and not to the living. The world
would belong to the dead. The world
would belong to the forever young,
who left the showers running.  Isn't that
something?
