Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise."
- James Madison
"Ecclesiastical establishments tend to great ignorance and corruption, all of which facilitate the
execution of mischievous projects."
- James Madison
"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."
- James Madison
"Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched.
Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question
with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the
homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.
- Thomas Jefferson
"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in
alliance with the despot.... they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into
mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer engine for their
purpose."
- Thomas Jefferson
"...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."
- Thomas Jefferson
"Lighthouses are more helpful than churches."
- Benjamin Franklin
"In the affairs of the world, men are saved, not by faith, but by the lack of it."
- Benjamin Franklin
"This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it."
- John Adams
The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason."
- Benjamin Franklin
"If we look back into history for the character of the present sects in Christianity, we shall
find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The
primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the Pagans, but practiced it on one
another. The first Protestants of the Church of England blamed persecution in the Romish Church,
but practiced it upon the Puritans. They found it wrong in Bishops, but fell into the practice
themselves both here (England) and in New England."
- Benjamin Franklin
"Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny of religion is the worst."
- Thomas Paine
"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek
Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any Church that I know of. My own
mind is my own Church. Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part,
I disbelieve them all."
- 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."
- Thomas Paine
"The Bible is not my book, nor Christianity my profession."
- Abraham Lincoln
2007-11-22
02:17:47
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