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>I'm really trying to find out who said "Information is the currency of >Democracy." I believe it was Thomas Jefferson. Have you come across >this in your vast research of Mr. Jefferson? I would be grateful for your >help. I have not run across that quotation in the Memorial Edition of Jefferson's Writings (ME), and doubt that it was written by Jefferson, since he did not, to my knowledge, speak of "currency" with reference to money or anything else. The popular use of the term "currency" seems to have been of later occurrence. Jefferson DID write several things that convey the same basic idea, however: "The information of the people at large can alone make them the safe as they are the sole depositary of our political and religious freedom." --Thomas Jefferson to William Duane, 1810. ME 12:417 "And say, finally, whether peace is best preserved by giving energy to the government or information to the people. This last is the most certain and the most legitimate engine of government. Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. Enable them to see that it is their interest to preserve peace and order, and they will preserve them. And it requires no very high degree of education to convince them of this. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787. (Forrest version) ME 6:392 "The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves, nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe." --Thomas Jefferson to Charles Yancey, 1816. ME 14:384 "No one more sincerely wishes the spread of information among mankind than I do, and none has greater confidence in its effect towards supporting free and good government." --Thomas Jefferson to Hugh L. White, 1810. ME 12:387 Sorry I could not be of more help. Best wishes, Eyler Coates