Quotes
Benjamin Franklin
“Lighthouses are more helpful than churches.”
“The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason.”
John Adams
“The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of
governments erected on the principles of nature… [In] the formation of the
American governments… it will never be pretended that any persons employed
in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the
influence of heaven… These governments were contrived merely by the use of
reason and the senses.” –A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the
United States of America, 1788“…The Government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the
Christian religion….” –treaty with Tripoli, passed unanimously by the U.S.
Senate and signed by President Adams on June 10, 1797“The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall
govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it
by fictitious miracles.” –Letter to Thomas Jefferson, June 20, 1815“I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the
abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved—the Cross.
Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!”–Letter to
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Paine
“All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish,
appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave
mankind, and monopolize power and profit.” —The Age of Reason, 1794“Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is none more
derrogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to
reason, and more contradictory in itself than this thing called Christianity.
Too absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for
practice, it renders the heart torpid and produces only atheists or fanatics.
As an engine of power, it serves the purpose of despotism, and as a means of
wealth, the avarice of priests, but so far as respects the good of man in
general it leads to nothing here or hereafter.”
Thomas Jefferson
“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.” –Letter to John
Adams, April 11, 1823“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 political as well as religious leaders will always
avail themselves for their own purposes.” –letter to Baron von Humboldt,
December 6, 1813
James Madison
“Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every
noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.” –letter to William Bradford,
Jr., April 1, 1774“During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity
been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride
and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both,
superstition, bigotry, and persecution.” A Memorial and Remonstrance,
addressed to the Virginia General Assembly, 1785“The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these
shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for
centuries.”—1803 letter objecting to the use of government land for
churches.