Truth advances, and error recedes step by step only; and to do to our fellow men the most good in our power, we must lead where we can, follow where we cannot, and still go with them, watching always the favorable moment for helping them to another step.
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Source, in full
Comment on establishing the University of Virginia, in a letter to Thomas Cooper (7 October 1814); published in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (1905) edited by Andrew Adgate Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh, Vol VII, p. 200