Thomas Jefferson Quotes

Freedom can exist only in the society of knowledge.

No one more sincerely wishes the spread of information among mankind than I do, and none has greater confidence in its effect upwards, supporting free and good government.

It is necessary that all our people be instructed, as universal education is the main pillar that must eventually support the temple of liberty.

Education, then, as universally diffused as the elements of God, is the life-blood of our body politic. The intelligence of the people is the one great fact of our civilization and our prosperity, — it is the beating heart of our age and of our land. It is education alone which makes equality possible without anarchy, and liberty without license.

The free man cannot be long an ignorant man.

Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.

We Americans have the great gifts of freedom and democracy, but it has been our education system that has fulfilled the promise of democracy.

The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.

If you know how to read, you have a complete education about life, then you know how to vote within a democracy. But if you don't know how to read, you don't know how to decide. That's the great thing about our country - we're a democracy of readers, and we should keep it that way.

Knowledge is the most democratic source of power.

A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.

There is no stopping the world's tendency to throw off imposed restraints, the religious authority that is based on the ignorance of the many, the political authority that is based on the knowledge of the few.

Education is a human right with immense power to transform. On its foundation rest the cornerstones of freedom, democracy and sustainable human development.

Before anything else, we need a new age of Enlightenment. Our present political systems must relinquish their claims on truth, justice and freedom and have to replace them with the search for truth, justice, freedom and reason.

If we reject science, we reject the common man.

Education is not just another consumer item. It is the bedrock of our democracy.

Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither justice nor freedom can be permanently maintained.

The benefits of education and of useful knowledge, generally diffused throughout a community, are essential to the preservation of a free government.

Learned institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people. They throw a light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty & dangerous encroachments on the public liberty.

Let us by all wise and constitutional measures promote intelligence among the people as the best means of preserving our liberties.

Without education, you can’t have democracy.

Faith is a poison that paralyzes the mind. In all the days of your life, seek knowledge!

Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among people.

When the tempers of men are softened as well as their knowledge improved, this humanity appears still more conspicuous, and is the chief characteristic which distinguishes a civilized age from times of barbarity and ignorance. Factions are then less inveterate, revolutions less tragical, authority less severe, and seditions less frequent.

We cannot sustain growth without trained manpower; not our democratic system of government, for freedom is fragile if citizens are ignorant.