The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.
My father didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.
History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.
Question with boldness even the existence of a 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; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.
One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters.
I beg you be persuaded that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution.
Blessed indeed is the man who hears many gentle voices call him father.
. . . Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection.
Fatherhood is pretending the present you love most is soap-on-a-rope.
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.
Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law.
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. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by a difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought to be deprecated. I was in hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far that we should never again see the religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of society.
Congress has no power to make any religious establishments.
or simply:
