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Religion is a subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved. I have considered it as a matter between every man and his Maker, in which no other, and far less the public, had a right to intermeddle.

Thomas Jefferson

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Thomas Jefferson
Age: 83 †
Born: 1743
Born: April 2
Died: 1826
Died: July 4
3Rd U.S. President
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More quotes by Thomas Jefferson

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I have examined all of the known superstitions of the world and i do not find our superstitions of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all founded on fables and mythology. Christianity has made one-half of the world fools and the other half Hypocrites
Thomas Jefferson
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I will not believe our labors are lost. I shall not die without a hope that light and liberty are on a steady advance.
Thomas Jefferson
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The opinions and beliefs of men follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds.
Thomas Jefferson
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All things here appear to me to trudge on in one and the same round: we rise in the morning that we may eat breakfast, dinner andsupper and to bed again that we may get up the next morning and do the same: so that you never saw two peas more alike than our yesterday and to-day.
Thomas Jefferson
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I believe from what I have lately seen that we should be substantially safe were our Citizens Armed, but we have not as many Arms as we have Enemies in the State.
Thomas Jefferson
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I hope we shall . . . crush in [its] birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations.
Thomas Jefferson
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I think by far the most important bill in our whole code is that for the diffusion of knowlege among the people. no other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom, and happiness.
Thomas Jefferson
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Where strictness of grammar does not weaken expression, it should be attended to. . . . But where, by small grammatical negligences, the energy of an idea is condensed, or a word stands for a sentence, I hold grammatical rigor in contempt.
Thomas Jefferson
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In the middle ages of Christianity opposition to the State opinions was hushed. The consequence was, Christianity became loaded with all the Romish follies. Nothing but free argument, raillery & even ridicule will preserve the purity of religion.
Thomas Jefferson
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If we did a good act merely from love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? ...Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God.
Thomas Jefferson
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Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.
Thomas Jefferson
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Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions.
Thomas Jefferson
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I am increasingly persuaded that the earth belongs exclusively to the living and that one generation has no more right to bind another to it's laws and judgments than one independent nation has the right to command another.
Thomas Jefferson
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While wading through the whimsies, the puerilities, and unintelligible jargon of this work [Plato's Republic], I laid it down often to ask myself how it could have been that the world should have so long consented to give reputation to such nonsense as this?
Thomas Jefferson
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I think with the Romans, that the general of today should be a soldier tomorrow if necessary.
Thomas Jefferson
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Nothing but a necessity invincible by any other means can justify ... a prostitution of laws, which constitute the pillars of our whole system of jurisprudence.
Thomas Jefferson
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Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread.
Thomas Jefferson
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The constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruption's of time and party, its members would become despots.
Thomas Jefferson
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I considered the British as our natural enemies, and as the only nation on earth who wished us ill from the bottom of their souls. And I am satisfied that were our continent to be swallowed up by the ocean, Great Britain would be in a bonfire from one end to the other.
Thomas Jefferson
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When a uniform exercise of kindness to prisoners on our part has been returned by as uniform severity on the part of our enemies,you must excuse me for saying it is high time, by other lessons, to teach respect to the dictates of humanity in such a case, retaliation becomes an act of benevolence.
Thomas Jefferson