Those who live by mystery & charlatanerie, fearing you would render them useless by simplifying the Christian philosophy - the most sublime and benevolent, but most perverted system that ever shone on man - endeavored to crush your well-earned & well-deserved fame.
— Thomas Jefferson
Jittery Founding Fathers Anti Religion quotations
The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others.
I am opposed to any form of tyranny over the mind of man.
The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty.
He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.
... happily the Government of the United States... gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.
Question with boldness even the existence of a god.
The study of theology, as it stands in Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion.
I can't tell Black people to fight a war that is Israel's war.
What kind of leader will you be, or should I be, to allow these babies Black, white and brown, to fight Israel's war, because Zionists dominate the government of the United States of America and her banking system.
I have sworn upon the altar of god.
But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?
I have found Christian dogma unintelligible.
Early in life, I absenteed myself from Christian assemblies.
[All religious sects] dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight; and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversion of the duperies in which they live.
Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions.
Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by difference of sentiment in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be deprecated.
This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.
History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government.
The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the study of nothing.
The United States of America should have a foundation free from the influence of clergy.
History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.
Ecclesiastical establishments tend to great ignorance and corruption
Preachers dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight.
I think vital religion has always suffered when orthodoxy is more regarded than virtue. The scriptures assure me that at the last day we shall not be examined on what we thought but what we did.
The religion-builders have so distorted and deformed the doctrines of Jesus, so muffled them in mysticism, fancies, and falsehoods.
Have you considered that system of holy lies and pious frauds that has raged and triumphed for 1,500 years?
Can a free government possibly exist with the Roman Catholic religion?
Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise.... During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution.
When, in short, we shall have unlearned everything which has been taught since his [Jesus'] day, and got back to the pure and simple doctrines he inculcated, we shall then be truly and worthily his disciples: and my opinion is that if nothing had ever been added to what flowed purely from his lips, the whole world would at this day have been Christian.