Founding Fathers Atheist Quotes - Page 3

• The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles?

  John Adams

  Kings, Race, Faith Religion

  John Adams, Abigail Adams, Thomas Jefferson (1971). “The Adams-Jefferson letters: the complete correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams”, Touchstone

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• Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.

  James Madison

  Religious, Atheist, Secular Society

  James Madison, Ralph Ketcham “Selected Writings of James Madison”, Hackett Publishing

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• Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst.

  Thomas Paine

  Christian, Religious, Atheist

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• It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Life, God, Religious

  Notes on the State of Virginia, query 17 (1781 - 1785)

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• Everyone must act according to the dictates of his own reason.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Religion, Liberty, Politics

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• I could not do otherwise without transcending the limits prescribed by the Constitution for the President and without feeling that I might in some degree disturb the security which religion nowadays enjoys in this country in its complete separation from the political concerns of the General Government.

  Andrew Jackson

  Country, Government, Political

  "A Subaltern's Furlough : Descriptive of Scenes in Various Parts of the United States, Upper and Lower Canada, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia during the Summer and Autumn of 1832" by Edward Thomas Coke, Ch. 9, p. 145, 1833.

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• We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.

  John Adams

  Religious, Revenge, Passion

  John Adams (1854). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.229

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• One of the embarrassing problems for the early nineteenth-century champions of the Christian faith was that not one of the first six Presidents of the United States was an orthodox Christian.

  Mortimer Adler

  Christian, Champion, President

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• 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.

  Thomas Paine

  Atheist, Pain, Fear

  Thomas Paine (1819). “The Theological Works of Thomas Paine”, p.4

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  Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

  John Adams

  Bible, God, Religious

  John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1854). “Works: with a life of the author”, p.229

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• The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries, that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion.

  Thomas Paine

  Race, Atheism, Wickedness

  Thomas Paine (1852). “The Age of Reason: Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology”, p.190

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• There is nothing which can better deserve your patronage, than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.

  George Washington

  Country, Inspiration, Knowledge

  George Washington, Jared Sparks (1838). “The Writings of George Washington: Being His Correspondence, Addresses, Messages, and Other Papers, Official and Private”, p.9

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• What is it the Bible teaches us? -- rapine, cruelty, and murder.

  Thomas Paine

  Murder, Founding Fathers Religion, Cruelty

  Thomas Paine (1995). “Thomas Paine: Collected Writings: Common Sense / The American Crisis / Rights of: (Library of America #76)”, p.822, Library of America

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• God is an essence that we know nothing of. Until this awful blasphemy is got rid of, there never will be any liberal science in the world.

  John Adams

  Essence, World, Awful

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• 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.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Religious, Children, Hypocrite

  Thomas Jefferson (2010). “The Works of Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia II, Correspondence 1782-1786”, p.80, Cosimo, Inc.

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• I hold that in this country there must be complete severance of Church and State; that public moneys shall not be used for the purpose of advancing any particular creed; and therefore that the public schools shall be nonsectarian and no public moneys appropriated for sectarian schools.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Country, School, Presidential

  Theodore Roosevelt (2005). “Fear God and Take Your Own Part”, p.361, Cosimo, Inc.

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• ... happily the Government of the United States... gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.

  George Washington

  Atheist, Government, Giving

  Letter to Hebrew congregation of Newport, R.I., 17 Aug. 1790

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• I believe ... that the soul of man is immortal and will be treated with justice in another life, respecting its conduct in this.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Karma, Believe, Men

  Benjamin Franklin, William Temple Franklin (1818). “Memoirs of the life and writings of Benjamin Franklin ...”, p.131, Printed for H. Colborn

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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.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Children, Believe, Men

  Benjamin Franklin (1905). “The Life of Benjamin Franklin: Written by Himself. Now First Edited from Original Manuscripts and from His Printed Correspondence and Other Writings”

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• I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Philosophy, Party, Men

  Thomas Jefferson, Joyce Appleby, Terence Ball (1999). “Jefferson: Political Writings”, p.410, Cambridge University Press

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• Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world.

  Voltaire

  Atheist, Religion, Atheism

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• July 4th ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion.

  John Adams

  4th Of July, Declaration Of Independence, Deliverance

  Letter to Abigail Adams, 3 July 1776

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• The Declaration of Independence laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity.

  John Adams

  Bible, God, Religious

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• I have examined all religions, and the result is that the Bible is the best book in the world.

  John Adams

  Bible, God, Religious

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• What havoc has been made of books through every century of the Christian era? Where are fifty gospels, condemned as spurious by the bull of Pope Gelasius? Where are the forty wagon-loads of Hebrew manuscripts burned in France, by order of another pope, because suspected of heresy? Remember the 'index expurgatorius', the inquisition, the stake, the axe, the halter and the guillotine.

  John Adams

  Christian, Book, Order

  John Adams (1851). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.479

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