Quotes & Sayings About Reading Thomas Jefferson

Altho' I rarely waste time in reading on theological subjects, as mangled by our Pseudo-Christians, yet I can readily suppose Basanistos may be amusing. Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus. If it could be understood it would not answer their purpose. Their security is in their faculty of shedding darkness, like the scuttlefish, thro' the element in which they move, and making it impenetrable to the eye of a pursuing enemy, and there they will skulk.
[Letter to Francis Adrian Van der Kemp on 30 July 1810 denouncing the Christian doctrine of the Trinity] — Thomas Jefferson

I am not fully informed of the practices at Harvard, but there is one from which we shall certainly vary, although it has been copied, I believe, by nearly every college and academy in the United States. That is, the holding the students all to one prescribed course of reading, and disallowing exclusive application to those branches only which are to qualify them for the particular vocations to which they are destined. We shall, on the contrary, allow them uncontrolled choice in the lectures they shall choose to attend, and require elementary qualification only, and sufficient age. — Thomas Jefferson

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. — Thomas Jefferson

The result of your fifty or sixty years of religious reading in the four words: 'Be just and good,' is that in which all our enquiries must end. — Thomas Jefferson

No religious reading, instruction or exercise, shall be prescribed or practiced [in the elementary schools] inconsistent with the tenets of any religious sect or denomination. — Thomas Jefferson

From forty years' experience of the wretched guess-work of the newspapers of what is not done in open daylight, and of their falsehood even as to that, I rarely think them worth reading, and almost never worth notice. — Thomas Jefferson

Required to be constantly recumbent I write slowly and with difficulty ... Weakened in body by infirmities and in mind by age, now far gone into my 83rd year, reading one newspaper only and forgetting immediately what I read. — Thomas Jefferson

We generally learn languages for the benefit of reading the books written in them — Thomas Jefferson

A lively and lasting sense of filial duty is more effectually impressed on the mind of a son or daughter by reading King Lear, than by all the dry volumes of ethics, and divinity that ever were written. — Thomas Jefferson

From candlelight to early bedtime, I read. — Thomas Jefferson

Reading, reflection and time have convinced me that the interests of society require the observation of those moral precepts only in which all religions agree. — Thomas Jefferson

Leave all the afternoon for exercise and recreation, which are as necessary as reading. I will rather say more necessary because health is worth more than learning. — Thomas Jefferson

I do not know whether you are fond of chemical reading. There are some things in this science worth reading. — Thomas Jefferson

Nothing is so engaging as the little domestic cares into which you appear to be entering, and as to reading it is useful for onlyfilling up the chinks of more useful and healthy occupations. — Thomas Jefferson

All that is necessary for a student is access to a library. — Thomas Jefferson

The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them. — Thomas Jefferson

My religious reading has long been confined to the moral branch of religion, which is the same in all religions; while in that branch which consists of dogmas, all differ[. — Thomas Jefferson

I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens who, reading newspapers, live and die in the belief that they have known something of what has been passing in their times. — Thomas Jefferson

Students of reading, writing and common arithmetick ... Graecian [Greek], Roman, English and American history ... should be rendered ... worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens. — Thomas Jefferson