The first three of these truths are so familiar that there is hardly need to repeat them: (1) that all men are created equal; (2) that the creator has endowed all men with certain unalienable rights, and (3) that among these rights are the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Instead of clarifying the conditions of this natural equality or elaborating upon these natural rights, however, this single, introductory sentence continues its enumeration of self-evident truths, adding one about the institution of government and another about its dissolution: (4) that governments are instituted to secure the natural rights of man; and (5) that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of the ends for which it was instituted, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.
