In the matter of religion, people eagerly fasten their eyes on the difference between their own creed and yours; whilst the charm of the study is in finding the agreements and identities in all the religions of humanity. Ralph Waldo Emerson
I believe with all my heart in a respectful even loving concordat between science and religion. Stephen J Gould
Religious controversies are always productive of more irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause. George Washington
Millions of men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burned, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch toward 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
The clergy, by getting themselves established by law and ingrafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil and religious rights of man. Thomas Jefferson
The priests of the different religious sects ... dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight, and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subdivision of the duperies on which they live. Thomas Jefferson
I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition [Christianity] one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded upon fables and mythologies. Thomas Jefferson
It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe in the Platonic mysticism that three are one, and one is three, and yet, that the one is not three, and the three are not one. But this constitutes the craft, the power, and the profits of the priest. Sweep away their gossamer fabrics of fictitious religion, and they would catch no more flies. Thomas Jefferson
If anybody thinks that kings, nobles and priests are good conservators of the public happiness, send him here [Paris]. It is the best school in the universe to cure him of that folly. He will see here with his own eyes that these descriptions of men are in abandoned confederacy against the happiness of the mass of people. Thomas Jefferson
I know it will give great offence to the clergy; but the advocate of religious freedom is to expect neither peace nor forgiveness from them. Thomas Jefferson
In our Richmond there is much fanaticism, but chiefly among the women. They have their night meetings and praying parties, where, attended by their priests, and sometimes by a hen-pecked husband, they pour forth the effusions of their love to Jesus, in terms as amatory and carnal, as their modesty will permit to a merely earthly lover. Thomas Jefferson
Certainly, no power to prescribe any religious exercise, or to assume authority in religious discipline, has been delegated to the General Government. Thomas Jefferson
Believing ... that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof’, thus building a wall of separation between church and state. Thomas Jefferson
To talk of immaterial existences, is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, God, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no God, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise. But I believe that I am supported in my creed of Materialism by the Locks, the Traceys, and the Stewarts. Thomas Jefferson
I am for freedom of religion and against all manoeuvres to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another. Thomas Jefferson
Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the ‘wall of separation between church and state’ therefore is absolutely essential in a free society. Thomas Jefferson
Will religion, the only remaining motive, be a restraint? ... Religion in its coolest state is not infallible, it may become a motive of oppression as well as a restraint from injustice. James Madison
Every new and successful example therefore of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters is of importance. James Madison
Religion and government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together. James Madison
Twenty times in the course of my late readings, 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!’ ... This world would be something not fit to be mentioned in polite company – I mean hell. So far from believing in the total and universal depravity of human nature, I believe there is no individual totally depraved. The most abandoned scoundrel that ever existed never wholly extinguished his conscience, and while conscience remains there is some religion. Popes, Jesuits, Sarbonnists, and Inquisitors have some religion. Fears and terrors appear to have produced a universal credulity – but fears of pain and death here do not seem so unconquerable as fears of what is to come hereafter. John Adams
I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved – the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced! With the rational respect that is due to it, knavish priests have added prostitutions of it, that fill or might fill the blackest and bloodiest pages of human history. John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, September 1816
The ‘divinity’ of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity. Nowhere in the Gospels do we find a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths, Doctrines and whole carloads of other foolish trumpery that we find Christianity encumbered with.
The priesthood have, in all ancient nations, monopolized learning. And ever since the Reformation where or when has existed a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate a free inquiry? ... 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 eyes and hands, and fly into your face and eyes. John Adams
As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation. But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed? John Adams, December 1816
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
There was a young man from Moldavia
Who couldn’t believe in the saviour
So he erected instead
With himself as the head
A religion of indecorous behaviour. Author unknown, cited Professors A C Grayling, with Hawkins & Dawkins v Neuberger & Spivey & Scrutton
Belief matters a good deal less than how you live your life ... By no means all religion is fundamentalist, extreme, exclusive and damaging. At its best it’s something modest, inspiring and sustaining. Rabbi Julia Neuberger, with Spivey & Scrutton v Hichens & Dawkins & Grayling, debate 2008
Religion can exert a stultifying effect on the intelligence, imagination and humanity of those who subscribe to it. Roger Scrutton, with Neuberger & Spivey v Hitchens & Dawkins & Grayling, debate 2008
Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned. Author unknown
The ultimate decadence. Stephen Fry, in conversation with Christopher Hitchens
Now who does He get? People with ginger whiskers and tinted spectacles who reduce the glories of theology to a kind of sharing. That’s what religion has become. A feeble and anaemic nonsense. ibid.
Yet for I know thou art religious
And hast a thing within thee called conscience,
With twenty popish tricks and ceremonies
Which I have seen thee careful to observe,
Therefore I urge thy oath; for that I know
An idiot holds his bauble for a god. William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus V i 74-79, Aaron to Lucius
Name not religion, for thou love’st the flesh,
And ne’er throughout the year to church thou go’st,
Except it be to pray against thy foes. William Shakespeare, I Henry VI I i 41-43