Quote

What has been the effect of [religious] coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.

Thomas Jefferson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Thomas Jefferson
Age: 83 †
Born: 1743
Born: April 2
Died: 1826
Died: July 4
3Rd U.S. President
Archaeologist
Architect
Cryptographer
Diplomat
Farmer
Inventor
Jurist
Lawyer
Philosopher
Politician
Slaveholder
President Jefferson
T. Jefferson
Religious
Founding
Half
Fools
Roguery
Religion
Error
Hypocrites
Earth
Errors
Uniformity
Make
Effect
Sects
World
Fool
Coercion
Effects
Hypocrite
Support
Superstitions

More quotes by Thomas Jefferson

Image
Having labored faithfully in establishing the right of self-government, we see in the rising generation, into whose hands it is passing, that purity of principle and energy of character which will protect and preserve it through their day, and deliver it over to their sons as they receive it from their fathers.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Still less let it be proposed that our properties within our own territories shall be taxed or regulated by any power on earth but our own.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
He alone who walks strict and upright, and who, in matters of opinion, will be contented that others should be as free as himself and acquiesce when his opinion is freely overruled, will attain his object in the end.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
We wish the happiness and prosperity of every nation.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Experience has taught me that manufacturers are now as necessary to our independence as to our comfort.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Never fear the want of business. A man who qualifies himself well for his calling, never fails of employment.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
We are sensible of the duty and expediency of submitting our opinions to the will of the majority, and can wait with patience till they get right if they happen to be at any time wrong.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
This formidable censor of the public functionaries [the press], by arraigning them at the tribunal of public opinion, produces reform peaceably, which must otherwise be done by revolution. It is also the best instrument for enlightening the mind of man and improving him as a rational, moral, and social being.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
I am never tempted to pray but when a warm feeling for my friends comes athwart my heart.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
In a government bottomed on the will of all, the... liberty of every individual citizen becomes interesting to all.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
No man has greater confidence than I have in the spirit of the people, to a rational extent. Whatever they can, they will.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
If any state in the Union will declare that it prefers separation... to a continuance in union... I have no hesitation in saying, 'let us separate.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
The ordinary affairs of a nation offer little difficulty to a person of any experience.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
A cold-blooded, calculation, unprincipled, usurper, without a virtue, no statesman, knowing nothing of commerce, political economy, or civil government, and supplying ignorance by bold presumption.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Educate and inform the whole mass of the people.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
I feel... an ardent desire to see knowledge so disseminated through the mass of mankind that it may, at length, reach even the extremes of society: beggars and kings.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
The order of nature [is] that individual happiness shall be inseparable from the practice of virtue.
Thomas Jefferson