Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degree.

Source: Thomas Jefferson
Notes on Virginia Q.XIV, 1782. ME 2:207

Topics: Government, Loss of Freedom

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.”

Source: Thomas Jefferson to Littleton Waller Tazewell, 1805.

Topics: Government, Loss of Freedom; Responsibility

Light and liberty go together.

Source: Thomas Jefferson to Tench Coxe, 1795.

Topics: Education

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.

Source: Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787. Madison Version FE 4:480

Topics: Education

Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government;... whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.

Source: Thomas Jefferson to Richard Price, 1789. ME 7:253

Topics: Responsibility

We are now trusting to those who are against us in position and principle, to fashion to their own form the minds and affections of our youth... This canker is eating on the vitals of our existence, and if not arrested at once, will be beyond remedy.

Source: Thomas Jefferson to James Breckinridge, 1821. ME 15:315

Topics: Education

I feel... an ardent desire to see knowledge so disseminated through the mass of mankind that it may, at length, reach even the extremes of society: beggars and kings.

Source: Thomas Jefferson: Reply to American Philosophical Society, 1808.

Topics: Education

Freedom of religion, freedom of the press, trial by jury, habeas corpus, and a representative legislature... I consider as the essentials constituting free government, and... the organization of the executive is interesting as it may insure wisdom and integrity in the first place, but next as it may favor or endanger the preservation of these fundamentals.

Source: Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours, 1815. ME 14:255

Topics: Government, Limited

I did not think the public offices confided to me to give away as charities.

Source: Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1802. ME 10:332

Topics: Politics

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