I cannot live without books…

—--Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 10 June 1815  {More}

…wherever the people are well informed they can be trusted with their own government…

—Thomas Jefferson to Richard Price, 8 Jan. 1789  {More}

enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body & mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

—Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Samuel Du Pont de Nemours, 24 Apr. 1816  {More}

A system of general instruction, which shall reach every description of our citizens, from the richest to the poorest, as it was the earliest, so will it be the latest, of all the public concerns in which I shall permit myself to take an interest.

—Thomas Jefferson to Joseph C. Cabell, 14 Jan. 1818  {More}

…untaught, and their ignorance & vices will, in future life cost us much dearer in their consequences, than it would have done, in their correction, by a good education.

—Thomas Jefferson to Joseph C. Cabell, 14 Jan. 1818  {More}

this institution of my native state, the Hobby of my old age, will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind, to explore and to expose every subject susceptible of it’s contemplation.

—Thomas Jefferson to Destutt de Tracy, 26 Dec. 1820  {More}

I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society, but the people themselves: and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their controul with a wholsome discretion, the remedy is, not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. this is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.

—Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 28 Sept. 1820  {More}

I look to the diffusion of light and education as the resource most to be relied on for ameliorating the condition, promoting the virtue and advancing the happiness of man.

—Thomas Jefferson to Cornelius C. Blatchly, 21 Oct. 1822  {More}