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Thomas Jefferson Quotes about Reading

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The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.

Thomas Jefferson
Business, Book, Reading

Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them.

Thomas Jefferson
Reading, Mean, Men
Letter to Edward Carrington, 16 Jan. 1787

The result of your fifty or sixty years of religious reading in the four words: 'Be just and good,' is that in which all our enquiries must end.

Thomas Jefferson
Religious, Reading, Years
Bernard Mayo, Thomas Jefferson (1988). “Jefferson Himself: The Personal Narrative of a Many-Sided American”, p.321, University of Virginia Press

The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them.

Thomas Jefferson
Reading, Mean, Men
Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoir, correspondence, and miscellanies from the papers of T. Jefferson”

No religious reading, instruction or exercise, shall be prescribed or practiced [in the elementary schools] inconsistent with the tenets of any religious sect or denomination.

Thomas Jefferson
Religious, Reading, School

I cannot live without books.

Thomas Jefferson
Book, Reading, Beer
Letter to John Adams, 10 June 1815

Nothing is so engaging as the little domestic cares into which you appear to be entering, and as to reading it is useful for onlyfilling up the chinks of more useful and healthy occupations.

Thomas Jefferson
Reading, Healthy, Entering
Thomas Jefferson (1974). “The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: 24 January to 31 March 1791”

Required to be constantly recumbent I write slowly and with difficulty.... Weakened in body by infirmities and in mind by age, now far gone into my 83rd year, reading one newspaper only and forgetting immediately what I read.

Thomas Jefferson
Reading, Writing, Years

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

From candlelight to early bedtime, I read.

Thomas Jefferson
Book, Reading, Bedtime
Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoir, correspondence, and miscellanies from the papers of T. Jefferson”

I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens who, reading newspapers, live and die in the belief that they have known something of what has been passing in their times.

Thomas Jefferson
Reading, Citizens, Looks
Thomas Jefferson (1977). “The Portable Thomas Jefferson”, p.400, Penguin

I do not know whether you are fond of chemical reading. There are some things in this science worth reading.

Thomas Jefferson
Reading, Science, Chemistry
Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoirs, Correspondence, and Private Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Late President of the United States”, p.434

Some men look at Constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them, like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well; I belonged to and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present, but without the experience of the present; and forty years of experience in Government is worth a century of book-reading; and this they would say themselves, were they to rise from the dead.

Thomas Jefferson
Country, Book, Reading
1816 Letter to Samuel Kercheval, 12 Jul.

From forty years' experience of the wretched guess-work of the newspapers of what is not done in open daylight, and of their falsehood even as to that, I rarely think them worth reading, and almost never worth notice.

Thomas Jefferson
Reading, Thinking, Years
Thomas Jefferson (2010). “The Works of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence and Papers, 1808-1816”, p.514, Cosimo, Inc.

among the values of classical learning I estimate the Luxury of reading the Greek & Roman authors in all the beauties of their originals ... I think myself more indebted to my father for this, than for all the other luxuries his cares and affections have placed within my reach.

Thomas Jefferson
Father, Educational, Reading
Thomas Jefferson, Henry Augustine Washington (1854). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence, cont”, p.131

Reading, reflection and time have convinced me that the interests of society require the observation of those moral precepts only in which all religions agree.

Thomas Jefferson
Reading, Reflection, Religion
Thomas Jefferson, Joyce Appleby, Terence Ball (1999). “Jefferson: Political Writings”, p.281, Cambridge University Press

Reading, reflection and time have convinced me that the interests of society require the observation of those moral precepts only in which all religions agree (for all forbid us to steal, murder, plunder, or bear false witness), and that we should not intermeddle with the particular dogmas in which all religions differ, and which are totally unconnected with morality.

Thomas Jefferson
Reading, Reflection, Bears
Thomas Jefferson, Joyce Appleby, Terence Ball (1999). “Jefferson: Political Writings”, p.281, Cambridge University Press

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

My religious reading has long been confined to the moral branch of religion, which is the same in all religions; while in that branch which consists of dogmas, all differ[.

Thomas Jefferson
Religious, Reading, Long
Thomas Jefferson (1854). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson”, p.416

We generally learn languages for the benefit of reading the books written in them

Thomas Jefferson
Book, Reading, Benefits
Thomas Jefferson (1861). “Correspondence. Reports and opinions while secretarry of state”, p.399