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Freedom of religion

"The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion"

• ⁠Treaty of Tripoli


"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise."

• ⁠James Madison


"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."

• ⁠Thomas Jefferson


"Have you considered that system of holy lies and pious frauds that has raged and triumphed for 1,500 years?" 

-John Adams


"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 classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."

• ⁠Thomas Jefferson


"This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it."

• ⁠John Adams


"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law."

• ⁠Thomas Jefferson


"Experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of religion, have had a contrary operation. 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."

• ⁠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


"Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half of the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind."

• ⁠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


"There is not one redeeming feature in our superstition of Christianity. It has made one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites."

• ⁠Thomas Jefferson



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