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Thomas Jefferson Quotes about Education

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If the children are untaught, their ignorance and vices will in future life cost us much dearer in their consequences than it would have done in their correction by a good education.

If the children are untaught, their ignorance and vices will in future life cost us much dearer in their consequences than it would have done in their correction by a good education.

Thomas Jefferson
Life, Education, Children
Thomas Jefferson (2010). “The Works of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence and Papers, 1816-1826”, p.84, Cosimo, Inc.

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.

Thomas Jefferson
Education, Wisdom, People
Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoir, correspondence, and miscellanies from the papers of T. Jefferson”

Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education and free discussion are the antidotes of both.

Thomas Jefferson
Education, Ignorance, Racism
Thomas Jefferson, Joyce Appleby, Terence Ball (1999). “Jefferson: Political Writings”, p.53, Cambridge University Press

There is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequal people.

Thomas Jefferson
Education, Equal Treatment, People

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

Thomas Jefferson
Education, Freedom, War
Letter to Colonel Charles Yancey, 6 January 1816

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

Thomas Jefferson
Inspiring, Education, Patriotic
Thomas Jefferson, John Dewey (2008). “The Essential Jefferson”, p.86, Courier Corporation

Convinced that the people are the only safe depositories of their own liberty, and that they are not safe unless enlightened to a certain degree, I have looked on our present state of liberty as a short-lived possession unless the mass of the people could be informed to a certain degree.

Thomas Jefferson
Education, People, Liberty
Thomas Jefferson (2017). “LETTERS”, p.709, 右灰文化傳播有限公司可提供下載列印

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.

Thomas Jefferson
Education, Peace, Exercise
Letter to William Charles Jarvis, 28 Sept. 1820

All the States but our own are sensible that knowlege is power.

Thomas Jefferson
Education, States, Sensible

Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to; convinced that on their good sense we may rely with most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty.

Thomas Jefferson
Thank You, Education, Teacher
Thomas Jefferson, Jerry Holmes (2002). “Thomas Jefferson: A Chronology of His Thoughts”, p.93, Rowman & Littlefield

To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness, the general mind must be strengthened by education.

Thomas Jefferson
Education, School, Clouds
Thomas Jefferson (2002). “Democracy”

It is (our) duty . . . to pay especial attention to the principles of government which shall be inculcated therein (at the University), and to provide that none shall be inculcated which are incompatible with those on which the Constitutions of this State, and of the United States were genuinely based, in the common opinion; and for this purpose it may be necessary to point out specially where these principles are to be found legitimately developed.

Thomas Jefferson
Education, Government, Principles

To all of which is added a selection from the elementary schools of subjects of the most promising genius, whose parents are too poor to give them further education, to be carried at the public expense through the college and university. The object is to bring into action that mass of talents which lies buried in poverty in every country, for want of the means of development, and thus give activity to a mass of mind, which, in proportion to our population, shall be double or treble of what it is in most countries.

Thomas Jefferson
Education, Country, Lying
Thomas Jefferson, Andrew M. Allison (1983). “The Real Thomas Jefferson”, Natl Center for Constitutional

The objects of this primary education . . . would be . . . to form the statesmen, legislators and judges, on whom public prosperity and individual happiness are so much to depend.

Thomas Jefferson
Education, Individual Happiness, Judging
Thomas Jefferson (1990). “Public and private papers”, Vintage Books

The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves, nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe.

Thomas Jefferson
Education, Men, People
Letter to Charles Yancey, 6 Jan. 1816

The truth is that the want of common education with us is not from our poverty, but from the want of an orderly system. More money is now paid for the education of a part than would be paid for that of the whole if systematically arranged.

Thomas Jefferson
Education, Would Be, Want
Thomas Jefferson, Nathaniel Francis Cabell, Joseph Carrington Cabell (1856). “Early History of the University of Virginia: As Contained in the Letters of Thomas Jefferson and Joseph C. Cabell, Hitherto Unpublished; with an Appendix, Consisting of Mr. Jefferson's Bill for a Complete System of Education and Other Illustrative Documents; and an Introduction, Comprising a Brief Historical Sketch of the University, and a Biographical Notice of Joseph C. Cabell”, p.186

People generally have more feeling for canals and roads than education. However, I hope we can advance them with equal pace.

Thomas Jefferson
Education, People, Feelings
Thomas Jefferson (1854). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson”, p.217

Students of reading, writing and common arithmetick . . . Graecian [Greek], Roman, English and American history . . . should be rendered . . . worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens.

Thomas Jefferson
Education, Reading, Writing

There are two subjects, indeed, which I shall claim a right to further as long as I breathe: the public education, and the sub-division of counties into wards. I consider the continuance of republican government as absolutely hanging on these two hooks.

Thomas Jefferson
Education, Government, Two
Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies: From the Papers of Thomas Jefferson”, p.239

Errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

Thomas Jefferson
Education, Patriotic, Free Opinion
First Inaugural Address, 4 Mar. 1801

The only foundation for useful education in a republic is to be laid in religion.

Thomas Jefferson
Education, Foundation, Republic

I am not fully informed of the practices at Harvard, but there is one from which we shall certainly vary, although it has been copied, I believe, by nearly every college and academy in the United States. That is, the holding the students all to one prescribed course of reading, and disallowing exclusive application to those branches only which are to qualify them for the particular vocations to which they are destined. We shall, on the contrary, allow them uncontrolled choice in the lectures they shall choose to attend, and require elementary qualification only, and sufficient age.

Thomas Jefferson
Education, Reading, Believe
Thomas Jefferson, Jerry Holmes (2002). “Thomas Jefferson: A Chronology of His Thoughts”, p.294, Rowman & Littlefield

no one more sincerely wishes the spread of information among mankind than I do, and none has greater confidence in it's effect towards supporting free & good government.

Thomas Jefferson
Education, Government, Wish
Thomas Jefferson, Henry Augustine Washington (1859). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence”, p.521

A system of general instruction, which shall reach every description of our citizens, from the richest to the poorest, as it was the earliest, so will it be the latest, of all the public concerns in which I shall permit myself to take an interest.

Thomas Jefferson
Education, Citizens, Permit
Thomas Jefferson, Nathaniel Francis Cabell, Joseph Carrington Cabell (1856). “Early History of the University of Virginia: As Contained in the Letters of Thomas Jefferson and Joseph C. Cabell, Hitherto Unpublished; with an Appendix, Consisting of Mr. Jefferson's Bill for a Complete System of Education and Other Illustrative Documents; and an Introduction, Comprising a Brief Historical Sketch of the University, and a Biographical Notice of Joseph C. Cabell”, p.106

But of all the views of this law [universal education] none is more important, none more legitimate, than that of rendering the people the safe, as they are the ultimate, guardians of their own liberty.

Thomas Jefferson
Education, Views, Law