Thomas Jefferson Quotes About Us Founding Fathers
-
Laws that forbid the carrying of arms . . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes . . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.
→ -
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.
→ -
Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have remover their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever.
→ -
I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government; I mean an additional article taking from the Federal Government the power of borrowing.
→ -
I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.
→ -
No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever.
→ -
It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe in the Platonic mysticisms that three are one, and one is three; and yet that the one is not three, and the three are not one.
→ -
To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father's has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association-the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.
→ -
Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.
→ -
If by religion we are to understand sectarian dogmas, in which no two of them agree, then your exclamation on that hypothesis is just, "that this would be the best of worlds if there were no religion in it.
→ -
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 "Jesus Christ," so that it would read "A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.
→ -
If we can but prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy.
→ -
I have sworn upon the altar of god.
→ -
A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.
→ -
It is not to be understood that I am with him (Jesus Christ) in all his doctrines. I am a Materialist; he takes the side of Spiritualism; he preaches the efficacy of repentance toward forgiveness of sin; I require a counterpoise of good works to redeem it.
→ -
The office of reformer of the superstitions of a nation, is ever more dangerous. Jesus had to work on the perilous confines of reason and religion; and a step to the right or left might place him within the grasp of the priests of the superstition, a bloodthirsty race, as cruel and remorseless as the being whom they represented as the family God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, and the local God of Israel. That Jesus did not mean to impose himself on mankind as the son of God, physically speaking, I have been convinced by the writings of men more learned than myself in that lore.
→ -
Creeds have been the bane of the Christian church ... made of Christendom a slaughter-house.
→ -
The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others.
→ -
Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him (i.e. Jesus) by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being.
→ -
The God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?
→ -
History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government.
→ -
Question with boldness even the existence of a god.
→ -
On the dogmas of religion, as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been quarrelling, fighting, burning and torturing one another, for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind.
→ -
I have sworn upon the altar of God Eternal, hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
→ -
Laws that forbid the carrying of arms disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.
→ -
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.
→ -
It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.
→ -
The hocus-pocus phantasm of a God, like another Cerberus, with one body and three heads, had its birth and growth in the blood of thousands and thousands of martyrs.
→ -
Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.
→ -
In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty.
→
Related Authors
-
Benjamin Franklin Founding Father of the United States -
Alexander Hamilton Founding Father of the United States -
Jefferson Davis Former President of the Confederate States of America -
Andrew Jackson 7th U.S. President -
Franklin D. Roosevelt 32nd U.S. President -
Theodore Roosevelt 26th U.S. President -
Ronald Reagan 40th U.S. President -
John Locke Philosopher -
George Washington 1st U.S. President -
Abigail Adams Former First Lady of the United States -
James Madison 4th U.S. President -
Patrick Henry Governor of Virginia -
Abraham Lincoln 16th U.S. President -
John Adams 2nd U.S. President -
Marquis de Lafayette Political figure -
Aaron Burr Former Vice President of the United States -
John Quincy Adams 6th U.S. President -
Ulysses S. Grant 18th U.S. President -
James Monroe 5th U.S. President -
Thomas Paine Author