"Nothing but good can result from an exchange of information and opinions between those whose circumstances and morals admit no doubt of the integrity of their views."

--Thomas Jefferson to Elbridge Gerry, 1797

"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself."

--Thomas Jefferson

"I join [with others] in branding as cowardly the idea that the human mind is incapable of further advance. This is precisely the doctrine which the present despots of the earth are inculcating and their friends here re-echoing and applying especially to religion and politics: 'that it is not probable that anything better will be discovered than what was known to our fathers.' We are to look backwards, then, and not forwards for the improvement of science and to find it amidst feudal barbarisms and the fires of Spital-fields. But thank heaven the American mind is already too much opened to listen to these impostures; and 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."

--Thomas Jefferson

"One of the questions... on which our parties took different sides was on the improvability of the human mind in science, in ethics, in government, etc. Those who advocated reformation of institutions pari passu with the progress of science maintained that no definite limits could be assigned to that progress. The enemies of reform, on the other hand, denied improvement and advocated steady adherence to the principles, practices and institutions of our fathers, which they represented as the consummation of wisdom and acme of excellence, beyond which the human mind could never advance... [They predicted that] freedom of inquiry... will produce nothing more worthy of transmission to posterity than the principles, institutions and systems of education received from their ancestors... [But we] possess... too much science not to see how much is still ahead of [us], unexplained and unexplored. [Our] own consciousness must place [us] as far before our ancestors as in the rear of our posterity."

--Thomas Jefferson to John Adams

"I am not myself apt to be alarmed at innovations recommended by reason. That dread belongs to those whose interests or prejudices shrink from the advance of truth and science."

--Thomas Jefferson