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Thomas Jefferson Quotes about Religion

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Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions.

Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions.

Thomas Jefferson
Religion, Atheism, Libertarian
Thomas Jefferson (1939). “Democracy”

Say nothing of my religion. It is known to God and myself alone.

Thomas Jefferson
Religion, Known
Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies: From the Papers of Thomas Jefferson”, p.300

He, who steadily observes those moral precepts in which all religions concur, will never be questioned at the gates of heaven as to the dogmas in which they all differ.

Thomas Jefferson
Destiny, Heaven, Religion
Thomas Jefferson, John Dewey (2008). “The Essential Jefferson”, p.90, Courier Corporation

Christian creeds and doctrines, the clergy's own fatal inventions, through all the ages has made of Christendom a slaughterhouse, and divided it into sects of inextinguishable hatred for one another.

Thomas Jefferson
Christian, Hatred, Religion

My opinion is that there would never have been an infidel, if there had never been a priest. The artificial structures they have built on the purest of all moral systems, for the purpose of deriving from it pence and power, revolts those who think for themselves, and who read in that system only what is really there.

Thomas Jefferson
Thinking, Religion, Atheism
Thomas Jefferson, H. A. Washington (2011). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private”, p.28, Cambridge University Press

I can never join Calvin in addressing his god. He was indeed an Atheist, which I can never be; or rather his religion was Daemonism. If ever man worshipped a false god, he did.

Thomas Jefferson
Atheist, Men, Religion
Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoirs, Correspondence and Private Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Late President of the United States”, p.371

Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous. . . .

Thomas Jefferson
Men, Religion, Reason
Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies: From the Papers of Thomas Jefferson”, p.360

The Christian god is a being of terrific character - cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust.

Thomas Jefferson
Christian, Character, Religion

Erecting the 'wall of separation between church and state'... is absolutely essential in a free society.

Thomas Jefferson
Religious, Wall, Religion

Civil officials have no business meddling in private religious affairs.

Thomas Jefferson
Religious, Religion, Atheism

I am satisfied, and sufficiently occupied with the things which are, without tormenting or troubling myself about those which may indeed be, but of which I have no evidence.

Thomas Jefferson
Religion, May, Evidence
Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoirs, 4: Correspondence and Private Papers”, p.341

I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature.

Thomas Jefferson
Atheist, Religion, President
"Christianity: the One, the Many: What Christianity Might Have Been and Could Still Become, Volume 1". Book by John F. Nash (p. 11), February 14, 2008.

The way to silence religious disputes is to take no notice of them.

Thomas Jefferson
Religious, Silence, Religion
Thomas Jefferson (1832). “Notes on the State of Virginia”, p.168

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
Men, Religion, Matter
Thomas Jefferson (2010). “The Works of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence and Papers, 1808-1816”, p.292, Cosimo, Inc.

I am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us.

Thomas Jefferson
Philosophy, Greek, Religion
"The Real Thomas Jefferson".

Every one must act according to the dictates of his own reason, and mine tells me that civil powers alone have been given to the President of the United States, and no authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents.

Thomas Jefferson
Religious, Exercise, Religion
Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoirs, 4: Correspondence and Private Papers”, p.107

[O]ur rules can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God.

Thomas Jefferson
Rights, Religion, Natural

I am for freedom of religion, and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendency of one sect over another.

Thomas Jefferson
Change, Religious, Religion
Thomas Jefferson, Brett F. Woods (2009). “Thomas Jefferson: Thoughts on War and Revolution : Annotated Correspondence”, p.143, Algora Publishing

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
Religious, Atheist, Religion
Thomas Jefferson (1977). “The Portable Thomas Jefferson”, p.428, Penguin

Above all things, lose no occasion of exercising your dispositions to be grateful, to be generous, to be charitable, to be humane, to be true, just, firm, orderly, courageous, etc. Consider every act of this kind as an exercise which will strengthen your moral faculties and increase your worth.

Thomas Jefferson
Grateful, Exercise, Religion
Thomas Jefferson (1963). “The Thomas Jefferson Papers”, Dodd

Gouverneur Morris had often told me that General Washington believed no more of that system (Christianity) than did he himself.

Thomas Jefferson
Religion, Atheism, Christianity

I may grow rich by an art I am compelled to follow; I may recover health by medicines I am compelled to take against my own judgment; but I cannot be saved by a worship I disbelieve and abhor.

Thomas Jefferson
Art, Medicine, Religion
Thomas Jefferson (1900). “The Life and Writings of ...”

I have ever judged of the religion of others by their lives... But this does not satisfy the priesthood. They must have a positive, a declared assent to all of their interested absurdities. My opinion is that there would never have been an infidel, if there had never been a priest.

Thomas Jefferson
Religion, Atheism, Doe

No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth.

Thomas Jefferson
Men, Interesting, Religion
Thomas Jefferson, Joyce Appleby, Terence Ball (1999). “Jefferson: Political Writings”, p.271, Cambridge University Press

He who made us would have been a pitiful bungler, if he had made the rules of our moral conduct a matter of science. For one man of science, there are thousands who are not. What would have become of them? Man was destined for society. His morality, therefore, was to be formed to this object. He was endowed with a sense of right and wrong, merely relative to this.

Thomas Jefferson
Men, Religion, Matter
Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoirs, Correspondence, and Private Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Late President of the United States”, p.216