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Thomas Jefferson Quotes about Science

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The plough is to the farmer what the wand is to the sorcerer. Its effect is really like sorcery.

The plough is to the farmer what the wand is to the sorcerer. Its effect is really like sorcery.

Thomas Jefferson
Science, Sorcery, Wands
Thomas Jefferson (2010). “The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: 11 March to 27 November 1813”

I do not pretend that language is science. It isan instrument for the attainment of science.

Thomas Jefferson
Science, Language, Instruments

Freedom, the first-born of science.

Thomas Jefferson
Freedom, Science, Firsts
Thomas Jefferson, Richard Holland Johnston, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association of the United States (1903). “The writings of Thomas Jefferson”

Chemistry is yet, indeed, a mere embryon. Its principles are contested; experiments seem contradictory; their subjects are so minute as to escape our senses; and their result too fallacious to satisfy the mind. It is probably an age too soon to propose the establishment of a system.

Thomas Jefferson
Science, Mind, Age
Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoir, correspondence, and miscellanies from the papers of T. Jefferson”

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

I have wished to see chemistry applied to domestic objects, to malting, for instance, brewing, making cider, to fermentation and distillation generally, to the making of bread, butter, cheese, soap, to the incubation of eggs, &c.

Thomas Jefferson
Science, Eggs, Cheese
Thomas Jefferson (1855). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson”, p.73

That the enthusiasm which characterizes youth should lift its parricide hands against freedom and science would be such a monstrous phenomenon as I cannot place among possible things in this age and country.

Thomas Jefferson
Country, Freedom, Science
Letter to William Green Mumford, June 18, 1799.

While wading through the whimsies, the puerilities, and unintelligible jargon of this work [Plato's Republic], I laid it down often to ask myself how it could have been that the world should have so long consented to give reputation to such nonsense as this?

Thomas Jefferson
Plato, Philosophy, Science
Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoirs, Correspondence, and Private Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Late President of the United States”, p.248

A schism has taken place among the chemists. A particular set of them in France have undertaken to remodel all the terms of the science, and to give every substance a new name, the composition, and especially the termination of which, shall define the relation in which it stands to other substances of the same family.

Thomas Jefferson
Taken, Science, Names
Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoirs, 2: Correspondence and Private Papers”, p.454

The ocean ... like the air, is the common birth-right of mankind.

Thomas Jefferson
Ocean, Science, Air

Speaking one day to Monsieur de Buffon, on the present ardor of chemical inquiry, he affected to consider chemistry but as cookery, and to place the toils of the laboratory on the footing with those of the kitchen. I think it, on the contrary, among the most useful of sciences, and big with future discoveries for the utility and safety of the human race.

Thomas Jefferson
Science, Thinking, Race
Thomas Jefferson, Jerry Holmes (2002). “Thomas Jefferson: A Chronology of His Thoughts”, p.102, Rowman & Littlefield

The attempt of Lavoisier to reform chemical nomenclature is premature. One single experiment may destroy the whole filiation of his terms; and his string of sulphates, sulphites, and sulphures, may have served no end than to have retarded the progress of science by a jargon, from the confusion of which time will be requisite to extricate us.

Thomas Jefferson
Science, Confusion, Confusing
Thomas Jefferson, H. A. Washington (2011). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private”, p.432, Cambridge University Press

The contradictory experiments of chemists leave us at liberty to conclude what we please. My conclusion is, that art has not yet invented sufficient aids to enable such subtle bodies [air, light, &c.] to make a well-defined impression on organs as blunt as ours; that it is laudable to encourage investigation but to hold back conclusion.

Thomas Jefferson
Art, Science, Light

You have heard of the new chemical nomenclature endeavored to be introduced by Lavoisier, Fourcroy, &c. Other chemists of this country, of equal note, reject it, and prove in my opinion that it is premature, insufficient and false. These latter are joined by the British chemists; and upon the whole, I think the new nomenclature will be rejected, after doing more harm than good. There are some good publications in it, which must be translated into the ordinary chemical language before they will be useful.

Thomas Jefferson
Country, Science, Thinking

It be urged that the wild and uncultivated tree, hitherto yielding sour and bitter fruit only, can never be made to yield better; yet we know that the grafting art implants a new tree on the savage stock, producing what is most estimable in kind and degree. Education, in like manner, engrafts a new man on the native stock, and improves what in his nature was vicious and perverse into qualities of virtue and social worth.

Thomas Jefferson
Art, Nature, Science
"Early history of the University of Virginia : as contained in the letters of Thomas Jefferson and Joseph C. Cabell, hitherto unpublished". Book by Thomas Jefferson, 1856.

Indeed, we need not look back half a century to times which many now living remember well, and see the wonderful advances in the sciences and arts which have been made within that period. Some of these have rendered the elements themselves subservient to the purposes of man, have harnessed them to the yoke of his labors and effected the great blessings of moderating his own, of accomplishing what was beyond his feeble force, and extending the comforts of life to a much enlarged circle, to those who had before known its necessaries only.

Thomas Jefferson
Life, Art, Science
Thomas Jefferson (1964). “Crusade Against Ignorance”