thomas-jefferson Quotes About religious Page 2

“The clergy, by getting themselves established by law and in-grafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil and religious rights of man.”

Source: Jefferson: Political Writings

“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State.”

People Men Should Believe Matter States Whole Government Action Law Lying Religion Church Religious Christianity Opinion Atheism Building Wall Exercise Worship Accounts Atheist Separation Establishment Reverence Contemplating Sovereign Founding Religious Faith First Amendment Church And State Legislature Separation Of Church And State There Is No God Our Founding Fathers Religious Belief Founding Fathers Christian State Government Organized Religion Us Founding Fathers Founding Fathers Religion Separation Between Church And State Founding Fathers Religious If There Is A God Religion God Christian Church Religious Liberty Founding Fathers Anti Religion Founding Fathers Of America Founding America American Founding Fathers Founding Fathers Atheist Deism There Being No God Christianity From Founding Fathers Christian Atheist Religion Christian Christian Father Us Constitution Religion And Government Anti Christian Christian Right Faith Religion Amendment 1 Deist Religious Truth Christianity And Government Laws And Government

Author:Thomas Jefferson

“Ministers of the Gospel are excluded [from serving as Visitors of the county Elementary Schools] to avoid jealousy from the other sects, were the public education committed to the ministers of a particular one; and with more reason than in the case of their exclusion from the legislative and executive functions.”

Reason School Religious Christianity Cases Particular Function Committed Ministers Executives Serving County Visitors Sects Exclusion Excluded Public Education Elementary School

Author:Thomas Jefferson

“No religious reading, instruction or exercise, shall be prescribed or practiced [in the elementary schools] inconsistent with the tenets of any religious sect or denomination.”

School Reading Religious Christianity Exercise Instruction Sects Inconsistent Elementary School Denominations Religious Sects

Author:Thomas Jefferson

“We have solved, by fair experiment, the great and interesting question whether freedom of religion is compatible with order in government and obedience to the laws. And we have experienced the quiet as well as the comfort which results from leaving every one to profess freely and openly those principles of religion which are the inductions of his own reason and the serious convictions of his own inquiries.”

Source: The writings of Thomas Jefferson: being his autobiography, correspondence, reports, messages, addresses, and other writings, official and private : published by the order of the Joint Committee of Congress on the Library, from the original manuscripts, deposited in the Department of State

“In our early struggles for liberty, religious freedom could not fail to become a primary object.”

Religious Liberty Christianity Struggle Failing Objects Primaries Religious Freedom

Book:The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Inaugural addresses and messages. Replies to public addresses. Indian addresses. Miscellaneous: 1. Notes on Virginia; 2. Biographical sketches of distinguished men; 3. The batture of New Orleans

Source: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Inaugural addresses and messages. Replies to public addresses. Indian addresses. Miscellaneous: 1. Notes on Virginia; 2. Biographical sketches of distinguished men; 3. The batture of New Orleans

“The hocus-pocus phantasm of a God, like another Cerberus, with one body and three heads, had its birth and growth in the blood of thousands and thousands of martyrs.”

Source: Jefferson on Freedom: Wisdom, Advice, and Hints on Freedom, Democracy, and the American Way

“The whole history of these books (i.e. the Gospels) is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.”

“Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him (i.e. Jesus) by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being.”

“It is between fifty and sixty years since I read it (i.e. the Book of Revelations), and I then considered it merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherence of our own nightly dreams.”

Years Book Dream Religion Religious Christianity Capable Worthy Explanation Revelations Fifty Sixty Maniacs Anti Christian Incoherence Book Of Revelation

Author:Thomas Jefferson

“His [Calvin's] religion was demonism. If ever man worshiped a false God, he did. The being described in his five points is ... a demon of malignant spirit. It would be more pardonable to believe in no God at all, than to blaspheme him by the atrocious attributes of Calvin”

Ifs Men Believe Would Be Spirit Religious Christianity Five Demon Attributes False Gods

Author:Thomas Jefferson

“I consider the government of the United States as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises. This results not only from the provision that no law shall be made respecting the establishment or free exercise of religion, but from that also which reserves to the States the powers not delegated to the United States. Certainly, no power to prescribe any religious exercise or to assume authority in any religious discipline has been delegated to the General Government. It must then rest with the States.”

Source: Memoirs, 4: Correspondence and Private Papers

“Well aware that the opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds; that Almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested his supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion.”

Source: Jefferson on Freedom: Wisdom, Advice, and Hints on Freedom, Democracy, and the American Way

“The opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction; that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous falacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty...”

“I consider the government of the U.S. as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises.”

Government Religious Liberty Discipline Exercise Constitution Institutions Doctrine Founding Fathers Religious Religious Liberty

Book:Jefferson on Freedom: Wisdom, Advice, and Hints on Freedom, Democracy, and the American Way

Source: Jefferson on Freedom: Wisdom, Advice, and Hints on Freedom, Democracy, and the American Way

“The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite.”

“Among the most inestimable of our blessings is that ... of liberty to worship our Creator in the way we think most agreeable to His will; a liberty deemed in other countries incompatible with good government and yet proved by our experience to be its best support.”

Thinking Way Country Government Religious Liberty Support Blessing Worship Creator Positive Atheism Other Countries Religious Freedom

Book:The Real Thomas Jefferson

Source: The Real Thomas Jefferson

“The rights [to religious freedom] are of the natural rights of mankind, and ... if any act shall be ... passed to repeal [an act granting those rights] or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right.”

Ifs Natural Religious Rights Mankind Positive Atheism Operations Religious Freedom Natural Rights Infringement

Author:Thomas Jefferson

“Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors? Fallible men; men governed by bad passions, by private as well as public reasons. And why subject it to coercion? To produce uniformity. But is uniformity of opinion desirable? No more than of face and stature.”

Men Wells Reason Faces Passion Religious Opinion Subjects Produce Positive Atheism Desirable Coercion Religious Freedom Stature Uniformity

Book:The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Inaugural addresses and messages. Replies to public addresses. Indian addresses. Miscellaneous: 1. Notes on Virginia; 2. Biographical sketches of distinguished men; 3. The batture at New Orleans

Source: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Inaugural addresses and messages. Replies to public addresses. Indian addresses. Miscellaneous: 1. Notes on Virginia; 2. Biographical sketches of distinguished men; 3. The batture at New Orleans

“Certain teachings in the Bible are as diamonds in a dung-heap.”

Certain Religious Teaching Diamond

Author:Thomas Jefferson

“Let us, then, fellow citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled, we have yet gained little if we counternance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of a bitter and bloody persecutions.”

Source: The portable Thomas Jefferson

“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others.”

Government Political Religion Church Religious Liberty Atheism Internet Constitution Libertarian Separation Free Speech Secular Coercion Church And State Freedom And Liberty Separation Of Church And State Freedom Liberty Our Founding Fathers Property Rights Religious Freedom Religious Belief Limited Government Founding Fathers Christian State Government Us Founding Fathers Forefathers Founding Fathers Religion Separation Between Church And State Founding Fathers Religious American Government Religious Liberty Limiting Government Founding Fathers Anti Religion Founding Fathers Of America Founding America American Founding Fathers Founding Fathers Atheist Deism Christian Atheist Christian Father Separation Of Powers Religion And Government Theocracy Christian Right Limiting Freedom Constitutional Government Drug Prohibition Religious Truth Power Government Non Religious Christian Freedom Legitimate Government Legitimate Power

Book:The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Inaugural addresses and messages. Replies to public addresses. Indian addresses. Miscellaneous: 1. Notes on Virginia; 2. Biographical sketches of distinguished men; 3. The batture of New Orleans

Source: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Inaugural addresses and messages. Replies to public addresses. Indian addresses. Miscellaneous: 1. Notes on Virginia; 2. Biographical sketches of distinguished men; 3. The batture of New Orleans

“Certainly, no power to prescribe any religious exercise, or to assume authority in religious discipline, has been delegated to the General Government.”

Has Beens Government Religion Religious Atheism Discipline Exercise Authority Assuming Church And State Separation Of Church And State Separation Between Church And State Founding Fathers Religious Religious Liberty Founding Fathers Atheist Religion Christian Religion And Government Christianity And Government

Book:Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies: From the Papers of Thomas Jefferson

Source: Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies: From the Papers of Thomas Jefferson

“Civil officials have no business meddling in private religious affairs.”

Religion Religious Atheism Affair Officials Meddling

Author:Thomas Jefferson

“Every one must act according to the dictates of his own reason, and mine tells me that civil powers alone have been given to the President of the United States, and no authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents.”

Has Beens States Reason Religion Given President Religious United United States Atheism Mines Exercise Authority Direct Constituents Founding Fathers Atheist

Book:Memoirs, 4: Correspondence and Private Papers

Source: Memoirs, 4: Correspondence and Private Papers

“If we did a good act merely from love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? ...Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God.”

Ifs Religion Belief Religious Virtue Atheism Morality Foundation Atheist Arise God Love Church And State Separation Of Church And State Organized Religion Separation Between Church And State Founding Fathers Atheist Christian Right

Book:The portable Thomas Jefferson

Source: The portable Thomas Jefferson

“But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and State.”

Source: The writings of Thomas Jefferson: being his autobiography, correspondence, reports, messages, addresses, and other writings, official and private

“The legislative powers of government reach actions only and not opinions.”