Benjamin Franklin Quotes About Religion
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Lighthouses are more helpful than churches.
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How many observe Christ's birthday! How few, His precepts!
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Religion I found to be without any tendency to inspire, promote, or confirm morality, serves principally to divide us and make us unfriendly to one another.
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Here is my Creed. I believe in one God, creator of the Universe. That he governs it by his Providence. That he ought to be worshiped. That the most acceptable service we render him is doing good to his other children. That the soul of Man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this.
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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 practised it on one another.
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It is much to be lamented that a man of Franklin's general good character and great influence should have been an unbeliever in Christianity, and also have done as much as he did to make others unbelievers.
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I wish it (Christianity) were more productive of good works ... I mean real good works ... not holy day keeping, sermon-hearing ... or making long prayers, filled with flatteries and compliments despised by wise men, and much less capable of pleasing the Deity.
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Some volumes against Deism fell into my hands ... they produced an effect precisely the reverse to what was intended by the writers; for the arguments of the Deists, which were cited in order to be refuted, appeared to me much more forcibly than the refutation itself; in a word, I soon became a thorough Deist.
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Indeed, when religious people quarrel about religion, or hungry people quarrel about victuals, it looks as if they had not much of either among them.
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Whoever shall introduce into public affairs the principles of primitive Christianity will change the face of the world.
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Many have quarreled about religion that never practice it.
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Scarcely was I arrived at fifteen years of age, when, after having doubted in turn of different tenets, according as I found them combated in the different books that I read, I began to doubt of Revelation itself.
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When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.
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The United States Constitutional Convention, except for three or four persons, thought prayers unnecessary.
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In the affairs of this world, men are saved not by faith, but by the want of it.
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The moral and religious system which Jesus Christ transmitted to us is the best the world has ever seen, or can see.
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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.
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I cannot conceive otherwise than that He, the Infinite Father, expects or requires no worship or praise from us, but that He is even infinitely above it.
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The way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason.
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The things of this world take up too much of my time, of which indeed I have too little left, to undertake anything like a reformation in religion.
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Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.
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I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life, I absenteed myself from Christian assemblies.
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Do not, however, mistake me. It is not to my good friend's heresy that I impute his honesty. On the contrary, 'tis his honesty that brought upon him the character of a heretic.
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This modesty in a sect is perhaps a singular instance in the history of mankind, every other sect supposing itself in possession of all truth, and that those who differ are so far in the wrong ; like a man traveling in foggy weather, those at some distance before him on the road he sees wrapped up in the fog, as well as those behind him, and also the people in the fields on each side, but near him all appears clear, tho' in truth he is as much in the fog as any of them.
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Revealed religion has no weight with me.
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To Follow by faith alone is to follow blindly.
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Benjamin Franklin
- Born: January 17, 1706
- Died: April 17, 1790
- Occupation: Founding Father of the United States
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