Thomas Jefferson Quotes

I learned a lot about morality from fiction, from movies.

For Mythology is the handmaid of literature; and literature is one of the best allies of virtue and promoters of happiness.

History teaches us virtue, but nature never ceases to teachh us vice.

I love my books.

It is becoming clear that the old platitudes can no longer be maintained, and that if we wish to improve our morals we must first improve our knowledge.

Literature has always been a part of my life. I studied history and literature in college. My mother is a novelist; I grew up around books.

Tutors who make youth learned do not always make them virtuous.

Political history is far too criminal and pathological to be a fit subject of study for the young. Children should acquire their heroes and villains from fiction.

Morals are an acquirement -- like music, like a foreign language, like piety, poker, paralysis -- no man is born with them.

Books are feeders of brothels.

That a science, which distinguishes the criterions of right and wrong; which teaches to establish the one, and prevent, punish, or redress the other; which employs in its theory the noblest faculties of the soul, and exerts in its practice the cardinal virtues of the heart; a science, which is universal in its use and extent, accommodated to each individual, yet comprehending the whole community; that a science like this should ever have been deemed unnecessary to be studied in an university, is matter of astonishment and concern.

A Bible and a newspaper in every house, a good school in every district ... are the principle support of virtue, morality and civil liberty.

I absolutely love reading.

Who will dare to write a history of human goodness?

I am convinced more and more day by day that fine writing is next to fine doing, the top thing in the world.

As soon as histories are properly told there is no more need of romances.

Sin writes histories, goodness is silent.

Man is an Animal, formidable both from his Passions and his Reason; his Passions often urging him to great Evils, and his Reason furnishing Means to achieve them. To train this Animal, and make him amenable to Order; to inure him to a Sense of Justice and Virtue, to withhold him from ill Courses by Fear, and encourage him in his Duty by Hopes; in short, to fashion and model him for Society, hath been the Aim of civil and religious Institutions; and, in all Times, the Endeavour of good and wise Men. The aptest Method for attaining this End, hath been always judged a proper Education.

Education is not complete unless we teach our children not only how to read and write but the difference between right and wrong.

History is a novel that has been lived, a novel is history that could have been.

For some stories, it's easy. The moral of 'The Three Bears,' for instance, is "Never break into someone else's house.' The moral of 'Snow White' is 'Never eat apples.' The moral of World War I is 'Never assassinate Archduke Ferdinand.

There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth.

Every good teaching may still end up producing evil bandits who have no principles whatsoever, an outcome even more likely when the teacher is also a bandit.

Lucky he who has been educated to bear his fate, whatsoever it may be, by an early example of uprightness, and a childish training in honor.