Quotes About Education

Every day is lost in which we do not learn something useful. Man has no nobler or more valuable possession than time.

no people can be both ignorant and free.

Those who expect to be both ignorant and free, expect what never was and never will be.

Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.

Without books, I would certainly die.

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large...

Do not be too severe upon the errors of the people, but reclaim them by enlightening them.

Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government

A] lawyer without books would be like a workman without tools.

A nation which expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, expects that which never was and never will be.

All that is necessary for a student is access to a library.

Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.

While the art of printing is left to us science can never be retrograde; what is once acquired of real knowledge can never be lost.

No people who are ignorant can be truly free.

If it is believed that these elementary schools will be better managed by the governor and council or any other general authority of the government, than by the parents within each ward, it is a belief against all experience.

I have often thought that nothing would do more extensive good at small expense than the establishment of a small circulating library in every county, to consist of a few well-chosen books, to be lent to the people of the country under regulations as would secure their safe return in due time.

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

It be urged that the wild and uncultivated tree, hitherto yielding sour and bitter fruit only, can never be made to yield better; yet we know that the grafting art implants a new tree on the savage stock, producing what is most estimable in kind and degree. Education, in like manner, engrafts a new man on the native stock, and improves what in his nature was vicious and perverse into qualities of virtue and social worth.

The rich alone use imported articles, and on these alone the whole taxes of the General Government are levied...and its surplus applied to canals, roads, schools, etc., the farmer will see his government supported, his children educated, and the face of his country made a paradise by the contributions of the rich alone, without his being called on to spend a cent from his earnings.

When describing the University of Virginia: Here, We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.

It is while we are young that the habit of industry is formed. If not then, it never is afterward.

The more ignorant we become the less value we set on science, and the less inclination we shall have to seek it.

I cannot live without books. Thomas Jefferson

The probable accumulation of the surpluses of revenue beyond what can be applied to the payment of the public debt... merits the consideration of Congress. Shall it lie unproductive in the public vaults?...Or shall it rather be appropriated to the improvements of roads, canals, rivers, education, and other great foundations of prosperity and union