Thomas Jefferson Quotes

We're growing up together, the human race. And we've discovered a lot of things that we didn't know. We're finding our way. Instead of thinking about doomsday all the time, think about how beautiful the world is. We're all together, and together we're getting wiser.

The slowness of one section of the world about adopting the valuable ideas of another section of it is a curious thing and unaccountable. This form of stupidity is confined to no community, to no nation; it is universal. The fat is the human race is not only slow about borrowing valuable ideas—but sometimes persists in not borrowing them at all.

The most original minds borrowed from one another.

The civilized world is far ahead of us. We have no choice but to catch up.

support … continued widespread innovation by resisting the wider application of patents

[Reporting on America:] It's progressive growth ... before the century has elapsed will have changed the ... colonial system of the universe and the relative position of all civilized society.

America, which up to the arrival of the Europeans had but one cereal, maize, and but one domestic animal for labor, the llama, and we can rejoice that the Europeans imported with themselves and their tools the ox, the ass and the horse, corn, cotton, sugarcane, coffee and finally the vine and the orange tree, creating there a new world of that glorious society which produces merchandise and which with an extraordinary swiftness of movement has already traversed the two phases of the blackest slavery and the most democratic wage system.

Three ideas stand out above all others in the influence they have exerted and are destined to exert upon the development of the human race: The idea of the Golden Rule, the idea of natural law, and the idea of age-long growth, or evolution.

Civilization develops man, and if he is, according to his whole character and destiny, made for development, civilization is his truly natural state …

Wilderness is the raw material out of which man has hammered the artifact called civilization.

The best ideas are common property.

It is the apparent plan of nature that as one human being, so also one generation, and also one nationality learn, learn incessantly, from and with the others, until all have comprehended the difficult lesson: No nationality has been solely designated by God as the chosen people of the earth; above all we must seek the truth and cultivate the garden of the common good. Hence no nationality of Europe may separate itself sharply, and foolishly say, "With us alone, with us dwells all wisdom.

Ideas are what power our economy.

The general rule of law is, that the noblest of human productions — knowledge, truths ascertained, conceptions and ideas — become, after voluntary communication to others, free as the air to common use.

Every breeze wafts intelligence from country to country, every wave rolls it and gives it forth, and all in turn receive it. There is a vast commerce of ideas, there are marts and exchanges for intellectual discoveries, and a wonderful fellowship of those individual intelligences which make up the minds and opinions of the age.

Ideas do not respect national frontiers, and this is especially so where language and other traditions are in common.

The alternative to intellectual property is straightforward: intellectual products should not be owned, as in the case of everyday language. That means not owned by individuals, corporations, governments, or the community as common property. It means that ideas are available to be used by anyone who wants to.

A period of high civilization is one in which thoughts fly freely from mind to mind, from one country to another-yes, from the past into the present.

That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.

Britain without us you can grow no stronger. We can grow tenfold without her.

Overprotecting intellectual property is as harmful as underprotecting it. Creativity is impossible without a rich public domain. Nothing today, likely nothing since we tamed fire, is genuinely new: Culture, like science and technology, grows by accretion, each new creator building on the works of those who came before. Overprotection stifles the very creative forces it's supposed to nurture.

From the very beginning, Europe has been not only a success story but also a story of success achieved by learning.

Innovation is a good thing. The human condition - put aside bioterrorism and a few footnotes - is improving because of innovation.

The positive aspects of modernity are to be acknowledged unreservedly: we are all grateful for the marvellous possibilities that it has opened up for mankind and for the progress in humanity that has been granted to us.

Languages evolve; ideas blend together. In computer technology, we all stand on others' shoulders.