![]() " 'virtue may be defined as the love of the laws and of our country. whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights." -Thomas Jefferson to Richard Price, 1789. ![]() "Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government. "The value of science to a republican people, the security it gives to liberty by enlightening the minds of its citizens, the protection it affords against foreign power, the virtue it inculcates, the just emulation of the distinction it confers on nations foremost in it in short, its identification with power, morals, order and happiness (which merits to it premiums of encouragement rather than repressive taxes), are considerations always present and with their just weight." -Thomas Jefferson: On the Book Duty, 1821. I consider the continuance of republican government as absolutely hanging on these two hooks." -Thomas Jefferson to Joseph C. "There are two subjects, indeed, which I shall claim a right to further as long as I breathe: the public education, and the sub-division of counties into wards. " a conviction that science is important to the preservation of our republican government, and that it is also essential to its protection against foreign power." -Thomas Jefferson to -, 1821. ![]() "Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to, convinced that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty." -Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787. "Light and liberty go together." -Thomas Jefferson to Tench Coxe, 1795. "Freedom the first-born daughter of science." -Thomas Jefferson to Francois D'Ivernois, 1795. "No nation is permitted to live in ignorance with impunity." -Thomas Jefferson: Virginia Board of Visitors Minutes, 1821. "Convinced that the people are the only safe depositories of their own liberty, and that they are not safe unless enlightened to a certain degree, I have looked on our present state of liberty as a short-lived possession unless the mass of the people could be informed to a certain degree." -Thomas Jefferson to Littleton Waller Tazewell, 1805. "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." -Thomas Jefferson to Charles Yancey, 1816. "Though may acquiesce, they cannot approve what they do not understand." -Thomas Jefferson: Opinion on Apportionment Bill, 1792. "The diffusion of information and the arraignment of all abuses at the bar of public reason, I deem the essential principles of our government, and consequently those which ought to shape its administration." -Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural Address, 1801. "The information of the people at large can alone make them the safe as they are the sole depositary of our political and religious freedom." -Thomas Jefferson to William Duane, 1810. "The most effectual means of preventing to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts which history exhibits, that possessed thereby of the experience of other ages and countries, they may be enabled to know ambition under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes." -Thomas Jefferson: Diffusion of Knowledge Bill, 1779. ![]() And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degree." -Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XIV, 1782. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories. "Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power." -Thomas Jefferson to William C. "I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. It should be noted, that when Jefferson speaks of "science," he is often referring to knowledge or learning in general. It is therefore imperative that the nation see to it that a suitable education be provided for all its citizens. Self-government is not possible unless the citizens are educated sufficiently to enable them to exercise oversight. ![]() Thomas Jefferson on Politics & GovernmentĪn enlightened citizenry is indispensable for the proper functioning of a republic. Jefferson on Politics & Government: Educating the People ![]()
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