Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel Burwell, 14 Mar. 1818 [Quote]
Drawing ... is an innocent & engaging amusement, often useful, and a qualification not to be neglected in one who is to become a mother & an instructor.
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel Burwell, 14 Mar. 1818 [Quote]
female education ... has occupied my attention so far only as the education of my own daughters ... I thought it essential to give them a solid education which might enable them, when become mothers, to educate their own daughters, and even to direct the course for sons, should their fathers be...
Extract from William C. Rives to John H. Cocke, 20 Jan. 1819 [Quote]
I am very happy in being able, at last, to congratulate you on the success of the Bill for the establishment of an University at the Central college. It was carried, on yesterday, by in the House of Delegates by the overwhelming & unexpected majority of 141 to 28 ... Among the many sources of...
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Richard Rush, 22 June 1819 [Quote]
books are indeed with me a necessary of life; and since I ceded my library to Congress I have been annually importing from Paris.
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Jeremiah Greenleaf, 5 July 1819 [Quote]
presents his compliments to mr Greenleaf and his thanks for the pamphlet on grammar which came to hand yesterday. the torpor of age and drudgery of letterwriting give him little time to read, and little power of profiting by the advances & improvements in every branch of science. he rejoices...
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to John Brazer, 24 Aug. 1819 [Quote]
among the values of classical learning I estimate the Luxury of reading the Greek & Roman authors in all the beauties of their originals ... I think myself more indebted to my father for this, than for all the other luxuries his cares and affections have placed within my reach.
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane, 6 Sept. 1819 [Quote]
each of the three departments has equally the right to decide for itself what is it’s duty under the constitution, without any regard to what the others may have decided for themselves under a similar question.But you intimate a wish that my opinion should be known on this subject. no, dear Sir....
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Joseph C. Cabell, 22 Jan. 1820 [Quote]
if our legislature does not heartily push our University we must send our children for education to Kentucky or Cambridge. the latter will return them to us fanatics & tories, the former will keep them to add to their population if however we are to go a begging any where for our education, I...
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Joseph C. Cabell, 22 Jan. 1820 [Quote]
all the states but our own are sensible that knolege is power. the Missouri question is for power. the efforts now generally making thro’ the states to advance their science is for power, while we are sinking into the barbarism of our Indian aborigines, and expect like them to oppose by ignorance...
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Cooper, 14 Aug. 1820 [Quote]
I will not despair then of the avail of your services in an establishment which I contemplate as the future bulwark of the human mind in this hemisphere.
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 28 Sept. 1820 [Quote]
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...
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Joseph C. Cabell, 28 Nov. 1820 [Quote]
what is wanting to restore us to our station among our confederates? not more money from the people. enough has been raised by them, and appropriated to this very object. it is that it should be employed understandingly, and for their greatest good. that good requires that, while they are...
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Destutt de Tracy, 26 Dec. 1820 [Quote]
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. our right may be doubted of mortgaging posterity for the expenses of a war in which they will have a...
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to William Roscoe, 27 Dec. 1820 [Quote]
this institution will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. for 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.
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to James Breckinridge, 15 Feb. 1821 [Quote]
I learn with deep affliction that nothing is likely to be done for our University this year. so near as it is to the shore that one shove more would land it there, I had hoped that would be given, and that we should open with the next year an institution on which the fortunes of our country...
Extract from University of Virginia Board of Visitors to U.S. Congress, 30 Nov. 1821 [Quote]
The Petition of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Chapman Johnson, Joseph C. Cabell, James Breckenridge, John Hartwell Cocke, and Robert Taylor the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia ... Respectfully representeth ... That the value of science to a republican people, the security it...
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to William J. Coffee, 10 July 1822 [Quote]
You are right in what you have thought and done as to the Metops of our Doric pavilion. those of the baths of Diocletian are all human faces, and so are to be those of our Doric pavilion. but in my middle room at Poplar Forest, I mean to mix the faces and ox-sculls, a fancy which I can indulge in...
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Cornelius C. Blatchly, 21 Oct. 1822 [Quote]
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.
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Maria Hadfield Cosway, 24 Oct. 1822 [Quote]
I, am laying the foundation of an University in my native state, which I hope will repay the liberalities of it’s legislature by improving the virtue and science of their country, already blest with a soil and climate emulating those of your favorite Lodi. I have been myself the Architect of the...
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Albert Gallatin, 29 Oct. 1822 [Quote]
our intention is that it’s professors shall be of the first order in their respective lines which can be procured on either side of the Atlantic.
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Joseph C. Cabell, 28 Dec. 1822 [Quote]
of all things the most important is the completion of the buildings. the remission of the debt will come of itself. it is already remitted in the mind of every man, even of the enemies of the institution. and there is nothing pressing very immediately for it’s expression. the great object of our...
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Joseph C. Cabell, 13 Jan. 1823 [Quote]
were it necessary to give up either the Primaries or the University, I would rather abandon the last. because it is safer to have a whole people respectably enlightened, than a few in a high state of science and the many in ignorance. this last is the most dangerous state in which a nation can be...
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Edward Everett, 27 Mar. 1824 [Quote]
the qualifications for self-government in society are not innate. they are the result of habit and long training.
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Edward Livingston, 25 Mar. 1825 [Quote]
Seven years ago indeed, I embarked in an enterprise ... I hope it will prove a blessing to my own state, and not unuseful perhaps to some others.
Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Richard Rush, 14 Sept. 1825 [Quote]
you left us in a state of political division, and in the same state you find us, and in that state I hope we shall ever be found. men are not made to have the same opinions, any more than the same features or bodily forms. we differ as others do; and on government as on other subjects.