Jefferson Quotes

"I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature."
[Thomas Jefferson]

"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law."
[Thomas Jefferson,letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper February 10, 1814]

"I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology."
[Thomas Jefferson]

"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, letter to Peter Carr, Aug. 10, 1787]

"The truth is, that the greatest enemies of the doctrine of Jesus are those, calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them to the structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in his genuine words. And 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 classified with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated Reformer of human errors."
[Thomas Jefferson, to John Adams, Apr. 11, 1823]

"The clergy, by getting themselves established by law and ingrafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil and religious rights of man."
[Thomas Jefferson, to Jeremiah Moor, 1800.]

"[When] the [Virginia] bill for establishing religious freedom ... was finally passed, ... a singular proposition proved that its protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word "Jesus Christ," so that it should read "a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion." The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend within the mantle of its protection the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo and infidel of every denomination."
[Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, 1821]

"Believing 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 legitimate 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." -- to Danbury Baptists, 1802.

"He is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong."
[Thomas Jefferson]

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it."
[Thomas Jefferson to Archibald Stuart, 1791