Founding Fathers Atheist Quotes - Page 3

• The government of the United States of America has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims.

  John Adams

  Character, Law, America

  "Treaty of Tripoli". Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the United States of America and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli of Barbary signed by President John Adams (Article 11), www.huffingtonpost.com. June 10, 1797.

  86 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  Thomas Paine

  Christian, Religious, Atheist

  44 Copy quote

• 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

  90 Copy quote

  Show source

• The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature. . . . [In] the formation of the American governments . . . it will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of heaven. . . . These governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.

  John Adams

  Simple, Government, America

  11 Copy quote

• 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.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  Thomas Jefferson

  Religion, Liberty, Politics

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  89 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  52 Copy quote

• 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

  35 Copy quote

  Show source
• 

  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

  380 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  69 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  13 Copy quote

• 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.

  39 Copy quote

  Show source

• ... 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

  33 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  Voltaire

  Atheist, Religion, Atheism

  68 Copy quote

• The civil Government, though bereft of every thing like an associated hierarchy, possesses the requisite stability, and performs its functions with complete success; whilst the number, the industry, and the morality of the Priesthood, and the devotion of the people, have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the State.

  James Madison

  Government, Religion, Atheism

  "Letters and Other Writings of James Madison".

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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”

  44 Copy quote

  Show source

• Every one must act according to the dictates of his own reason, and mine tells me that civil powers alone have been given to the President of the United States, and no authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Religious, Exercise, Religion

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoirs, 4: Correspondence and Private Papers”, p.107

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Certainly, no power to prescribe any religious exercise, or to assume authority in religious discipline, has been delegated to the General Government.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Religious, Exercise, Government

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies: From the Papers of Thomas Jefferson”, p.104

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  John Adams

  Bible, God, Religious

  17 Copy quote

• 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

  26 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  John Adams

  Bible, God, Religious

  34 Copy quote

• Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects?

  James Madison

  Christian, Atheist, Religion

  "Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments" (1785)

  13 Copy quote

  Show source