Few Relevant Quotes

[♦ nivek ♦]

"The priesthood have, in all ancient nations, nearly monopolized learning.... And, even since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate A FREE INQUIRY? The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooish brutality is patiently endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded. But touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you will soon find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your legs and hands, and fly into your face and eyes."

-- John Adams

(1735-1826) Founding Father, 2nd US President

Source: letter to John Taylor, 1814

http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/J...dams.Quote.043B

 

 

"Twenty times in the course of my late reading have I been on the point of breaking out, "This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!!!" But in this exclamation I would have been as fanatical as Bryant or Cleverly. Without religion this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in polite company, I mean hell."

-- John Adams

(1735-1826) Founding Father, 2nd US President

Source: letter to Thomas Jefferson, June 28, 1813, quoted from Charles Francis Adams, ed., Works of John Adams (1856), vol. X, p. 254

http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/J...dams.Quote.6226

 

 

"We think ourselves possessed, or, at least, we boast that we are so, of liberty of conscience on all subjects, and of the right of free inquiry and private judgment in all cases, and yet how far are we from these exalted privileges in fact! There exists, I believe, throughout the whole Christian world, a law which makes it blasphemy to deny or doubt the divine inspiration of all the books of the Old and New Testaments, from Genesis to Revelations. In most countries of Europe it is punished by fire at the stake, or the rack, or the wheel. In England itself it is punished by boring through the tongue with a red-hot poker. In America it is not better; even in our own Massachusetts, which I believe, upon the whole, is as temperate and moderate in religious zeal as most of the States, a law was made in the latter end of the last century, repealing the cruel punishments of the former laws, but substituting fine and imprisonment upon all those blasphemers upon any book of the Old Testament or New. Now, what free inquiry, when a writer must surely encounter the risk of fine or imprisonment for adducing any argument for investigating into the divine authority of those books? Who would run the risk of translating Dupuis? But I cannot enlarge upon this subject, though I have it much at heart. I think such laws a great embarrassment, great obstructions to the improvement of the human mind. Books that cannot bear examination, certainly ought not to be established as divine inspiration by penal laws. It is true, few persons appear desirous to put such laws in execution, and it is also true that some few persons are hardy enough to venture to depart from them. But as long as they continue in force as laws, the human mind must make an awkward and clumsy progress in its investigations. I wish they were repealed. The substance and essence of Christianity, as I understand it, is eternal and unchangeable, and will bear examination forever, but it has been mixed with extraneous ingredients, which I think will not bear examination, and they ought to be separated. Adieu."

-- John Adams

(1735-1826) Founding Father, 2nd US President

Source: one of his last letters to Thomas Jefferson, January 23, 1825

http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/J...dams.Quote.76E0

 

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"[My views on Christianity] are the result of a life of inquiry & reflection, and very different from that anti-Christian system imputed to me by those who know nothing of my opinions. To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence; & believing he never claimed any other."

-- Thomas Jefferson

(1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President

Source: letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, Apr. 21, 1803

http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/T...rson.Quote.2F9A

 

 

"Nothing can be more exactly and seriously true than what is there [the very words only of Jesus] stated; that but a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandising their oppressors in Church and State; that the purest system of morals ever before preached to man, has been adulterated and sophisticated by artificial constructions, into a mere contrivance to filch wealth and power to themselves; that rational men not being able to swallow their impious heresies, in order to force them down their throats, they raise the hue and cry of infidelity, while themselves are the greatest obstacles to the advancement of the real doctrines of Jesus, and do in fact constitute the real Anti-Christ."

-- Thomas Jefferson

(1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President

Source: letter to Samuel Kerchreview, January 19, 1810

http://books.google.com/books?id=8QXWohr6T...5&lpg=PA345

http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/T...rson.Quote.9A7B

 

 

"The truth is that the greatest enemies to the doctrines of Jesus are those calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them for the structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in his genuine words. And 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. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with all this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this the most venerated reformer of human errors."

-- Thomas Jefferson

(1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President

Source: letter to John Adams, from Monticello, April 11, 1823

http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/jefferson_adams.html

http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/T...rson.Quote.1539

 

 

"Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will,

I think, recognize that the domination of education or of government

by any one particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement

for the people."

-- Eleanor Roosevelt

[Anna Eleanor Roosevelt] (1884-1963) Wife of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt

http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/E...velt.Quote.9C9A

[1oddmanout]

"Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will,

I think, recognize that the domination of education or of government

by any one particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement

for the people."

-- Eleanor Roosevelt

[Anna Eleanor Roosevelt] (1884-1963) Wife of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt

http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/E...velt.Quote.9C9A

 

Wonderful, wonderful. I so wish the Rabid Right would make an intelligent effort to read history, but then again, fanatics always turn into Royalty or Fascists.