Thomas Jefferson Quotes About Poverty

• Paper is poverty, it is only the ghost of money, and not money itself.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Historical, Paper, Poverty

  Thomas Jefferson (1861). “Correspondence”, p.405

• I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Believe, Army, Names

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies: From the Papers of Thomas Jefferson”, p.277

• Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Animal, Economic Inequality

  Letter to Colonel Edward Carrington, 16 January 1787

• To constrain the brute force of the people, the European governments deem it necessary to keep them down by hard labor, poverty and ignorance, and to take from them, as from bees, so much of their earnings, as that unremitting labor shall be necessary to obtain a sufficient surplus to sustain a scanty and miserable life.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Ignorance, Government, People

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies: From the Papers of Thomas Jefferson”, p.369

• To all of which is added a selection from the elementary schools of subjects of the most promising genius, whose parents are too poor to give them further education, to be carried at the public expense through the college and university. The object is to bring into action that mass of talents which lies buried in poverty in every country, for want of the means of development, and thus give activity to a mass of mind, which, in proportion to our population, shall be double or treble of what it is in most countries.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Education, Country, Lying

  Thomas Jefferson, Andrew M. Allison (1983). “The Real Thomas Jefferson”, Natl Center for Constitutional

• Whenever there are in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on. The small landowners are the most precious part of a state

  Thomas Jefferson

  Country, Business, Men

• Even in Europe a change has sensibly taken place in the mind of man. Science has liberated the ideas of those who read and reflect, and the American example has kindled feelings of right in the people. An insurrection has consequently begun of science talents and courage against rank and birth, which have fallen into contempt. It has failed in its first effort, because the mobs of the cities, the instrument used for its accomplishment, debased by ignorance, poverty and vice, could not be restrained to rational action. But the world will soon recover from the panic of this first catastrophe.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Change, Taken, Ignorance

  Thomas Jefferson (1977). “The Portable Thomas Jefferson”, p.426, Penguin

• The truth is that the want of common education with us is not from our poverty, but from the want of an orderly system. More money is now paid for the education of a part than would be paid for that of the whole if systematically arranged.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Education, Would Be, Want

  Thomas Jefferson, Nathaniel Francis Cabell, Joseph Carrington Cabell (1856). “Early History of the University of Virginia: As Contained in the Letters of Thomas Jefferson and Joseph C. Cabell, Hitherto Unpublished; with an Appendix, Consisting of Mr. Jefferson's Bill for a Complete System of Education and Other Illustrative Documents; and an Introduction, Comprising a Brief Historical Sketch of the University, and a Biographical Notice of Joseph C. Cabell”, p.186

• Our [Virginia's] act for freedom of religion is extremely applauded. The Ambassadors and ministers of the several nations of Europe resident at this court have asked me copies of it to send to their sovereigns, and it is inserted at full length in several books now in the press; among others, in the new Encyclopédie. I think it will produce considerable good even in those countries where ignorance, superstition, poverty and oppression of body and mind in every form, are so firmly settled on the mass of the people, that their redemption from them can never be hoped.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Country, Book, Ignorance

  Thomas Jefferson (1830). “Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies, from the Papers of Thomas Jefferson”, p.44

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