And liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people who have a right from the frame of their nature to knowledge...

There are two types of education. One should teach us how to make a living, and the other how to live.

The deliberate union of so great and various a people in such a place, is without all partiality or prejudice, if not the greatest exertion of human understanding, the greatest single effort of national deliberation that the world has ever seen.

Laws for the liberal education of the youth, especially of the lower class of the people, are so extremely wise and useful, that, to a humane and generous mind, no expense for this purpose would be thought extravagant.

When writing the constitution for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, John Adams wrote:
I must judge for myself, but how can I judge, how can any man judge, unless his mind has been opened and enlarged by reading.

The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take the place of, indeed exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.