Thomas Jefferson Quotes

Preach ... a crusade against against ignorance; establish and improve the law for educating the common people. .... The tax that will be paid for this purpose is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles, who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.

The present age has witnessed an extraordinary increase of a thinking public, by the facilities afforded to the diffusion of reading; the former happy resignation to ignorance begins to make way for a state of half-enlightenment, and few persons are willing to remain in the condition in which their birth has placed then.

The more Adams thought about the future of his country, the more convinced he became that it rested on education. Before any great things are accomplished, he wrote to a correspondent, a memorable change must be made in the system of education and knowledge must become so general as to raise the lower ranks of society nearer to the higher. The education of a nation instead of being confined to a few schools and universities for the instruction of the few, must become the national care and expense for the formation of the many.

The want of education and moral training is the only real barrier that exists between the different classes of men.

The last thing that should happen is funding cut for education; it should be increased. We need to put more money towards education, and anything else is abusive.

The point of my work is to show that culture and education aren't simply hobbies or minor influences. They are hugely important in the affirmation of differences between groups and social classes and in the reproduction of those differences.

Knowledge without education is but armed injustice.

A quality education grants us the ability to fight the war on ignorance and poverty.

Ignorant people are apt to overrate the value of what is called education. The sons of the poor, having suffered the privations of poverty, think of wealth as the mother of joy.

We are afraid to face the hard questions. We are willing to tackle drugs, crime, and public education only if it doesn't cost us any new taxes.

You can either be informed and your own rulers, or you can be ignorant and have someone else, who is not ignorant, rule over you.

If it is the duty of the State to educate, it is the duty of the State also to bear the burden of education, namely, the taxation out of which education is provided.

Every society naturally divides itself into classes. The author of nature has bestowed on some greater capacities than on others--birth, education, talents and wealth, create distinctions among men as visible and of as much influence as titles, stars and garters. In every society, men of this class will command a superior degree of respect--and if the government is so constituted as to admit but few to exercise the powers of it, it will, according to the natural course of things, be in their hands.

School-houses are the republican line of fortifications

The knowledge of the few cannot counteract the ignorance of the many.... The light of philosophy, when it is confined to a small minority, points out the possessors as the victims rather than the illuminators of the multitude.

Each class of society has its own requirements; but it may be said that every class teaches the one immediately below it; and if the highest class be ignorant, uneducated, loving display, luxuriousness, and idle, the same spirit will prevail in humbler life.

Distinction in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth can not be produced by human institutions.

The less that is applied to education, the less they [the people] will have to pay in taxation

The fundamental error of Europe has been to confine the light of knowledge to the wealthy and great, while the humble and the depressed have been as sedulously excluded from its participation as the wretched criminal, immured in a dungeon, is from the light of Heaven.

Some have objected to the instruction of the lower classes from an apprehension that it would lift them above their sphere, make them dissatisfied with their station in life, and, by impairing the habits of subordination, endanger the tranquility of the state; an objection devoid surely of all force and validity.

I'm a beneficiary of an extraordinary education, and I believe that no matter where you live, the access to education is key to social mobility.

It's good to pay high taxes - you have free schools, free universities. It's a much more decent society than those where everybody pays their own way, and some people don't get anything.

I have always worried about who can read, who can't, who doesn't, and the great, life-altering consequences hidden within those distinctions.

If we would spend on education half the amount of money that we currently lavish on sports and entertainment, we could provide complete and free education for every student in this country.

The division is based on knowledge, based on qualifications - but as I learned from the factionless, a system that relies on a group of uneducated people to do its dirty work without giving them a way to rise is hardly fair.