"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful."
- Seneca
* * *
"The difference between organized religion and spirituality is that
organized religion teaches you to fear hell; spirituality is for people
who have already been there."
- Gary Bussey
* * *
"It has been found that every act in the drama of the life of Jesus, and every quality
assigned to Christ, is to be found in the life of Krishna."
- J.D. Buck, "Mystic Masonry" P. 119, 138
* * *
"Masonry makes no profession of Christianity... but looks forward to the time when the
labor of our ancient brethren shall be symbolized by the erection of a spiritual temple...
in which there shall be but one altar and one worship; one common altar of Masonry on which
the Veda, Shastra, Sade, Zend-Avesta, Koran, and Holy Bible shall lie... and at whose shrine
the Hindoo, the Persian, the Assyrian, the Chaldean, the Egyptian, the Chinese, the Mohammedan,
the Jew and the Christian may kneel..."
- "The Kentucky Monitor," Fellowcraft Degree, p. 95
* * *
"...the literal meaning (of the bible) is for the vulgar only."
- Albert Pike, "Digest of Morals and Dogma," p. 166
* * *
"To all this (error of stupidity) the absurd reading of the established Church, taking literally
the figurative, allegorical, and mythical language of a collection of Oriental books of different
ages, directly and inevitably led."
- Albert Pike, "Morals and Dogma," 30th Degree, p. 818
* * *
"All truly dogmatic religions have issued from the Kabalah and return to it; everything
scientific and grand in the religious dreams of the Illuminati, Jacob Boeheme, Swedenborg,
Saint Martin, and others is borrowed from the Kabalah; all Masonic associations owe to it
their secrets and their symbols."
- Albert Pike, "Morals and Dogma," 28th Degree, p. 744
* * *
"Lucifer, the Light Bearer! Strange and mysterious name to give to the Spirit of Darkness!
Lucifer, the Son of the Morning! It is he who bears the Light, and with all its splendors
intolerable blinds feeble, sensual, or selfish Souls? Doubt it not!"
- Albert Pike, "Morals and Dogma," 19th Degree, p. 324
* * *
"We know too much, are convinced of too little. Our literature is a substitute for religion, and so to is our religion."
- T.S. Eliot, A Dialogue on Dramatic Poetry, 1928
* * *
"Concentration of power in a political machine is bad; and an Established Church is only a political machine; it was invented for that; it is nursed, cradled, preserved for that; it is an enemy to human liberty, and does no good which it could not better do in a split-up and scattered condition."
- Samuel Clemens, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
* * *
"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots."
- George H. W. Bush, 1988
* * *
"There has been only one Christian. They caught him and crucified him - early."
- Mark Twain, Notebook, 1898
* * *
"The so-called Christian nations are the most enlightened and progressive ... but in spite of their religion, not because of it. The Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo down to our time, when the use of anesthetics in childbirth was regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblical curse pronounced against Eve. And every step in astronomy and geology ever taken has been opposed by bigotry and superstition. The Greeks surpassed us in artistic culture and in architecture five hundred years before Christian religion was born."
- Mark Twain, a Biography
* * *
"If Christ were here there is one thing he would not be - a Christian."
- Mark Twain's Notebook
* * *
"The church is always trying to get other people to reform; it might not be a bad idea to reform itself a little, by way of example."
- Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad
* * *
"Nothing agrees with me. If I drink coffee, it gives me dyspepsia; if I drink wine, it gives me gout; if I go to church, it gives me dysentery."
- Mark Twain, Letter to Henry H. Rogers, August 7, 1905
* * *
"It [the Bible] is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals;
and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies."
- Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth
* * *
"The Christian's Bible is a drug store. It's contents remain the same; but the medical practice changes ... The world has corrected the Bible.
The church never corrects it; and also never fails to drop in at the tail of the procession - and take credit of the correction.
During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. The Bible commanded that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church,
after eight hundred years, gathered up its halters, thumb-screws, and firebrands, and set about its holy work in earnest. She worked hard at it
night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the
Christian world clean with their foul blood.
"Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One does not know whether to laugh or to cry ...
There are no witches. The witch text remains; only the practice has changed. Hell fire is gone; but the text remains. Infant damnation is gone,
but the text remains. More than two hundred death penalties are gone from the law books, but the texts that authorized them remain."
- Mark Twain, "Bible Teaching and Religious Practice," Europe and Elsewhere
* * *
"When one reads Bibles, one is less surprised at what the Deity knows than at what he doesn't know."
- Mark Twain's Notebook
* * *
"Blasphemy? No, it is not blasphemy. If God is as vast as that, he is above blasphemy; if he is as little as that, he is beneath it."
- Mark Twain, a Biography
* * *
"Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in."
- Mark Twain, a Biography
* * *
"Singing hymns and waving palm branches through all eternity is pretty when you hear about it in the pulpit,
but it's as poor a way to put in valuable time as a body could contrive."
- Mark Twain, Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven
* * *
"Let us swear while we may, for in Heaven it will not be allowed."
- Mark Twain, Notebook, 1898
* * *
"I have never seen what to me seemed an atom of truth that there is a future life ... and yet - I am
strongly inclined to expect one."
- Mark Twain, a Biography
* * *
"When I reflect upon the number of disagreeable people who I know have gone on to a better world, I am
moved to lead a different life."
- Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
* * *
"We may not doubt that society in Heaven consists mainly of undesirable persons."
- Mark Twain's Notebook
* * *
"It is easy to see that the inventor of Heaven did not originate the idea, but copied it from the show-ceremonies of
some sorry little sovereign state up in the back settlements of the Orient somewhere."
- Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth
* * *
"The inventor of their Heaven empties into it all the nations of the earth, in one common jumble. All are on an equality
absolute, no one of them ranking another; they have to be 'brothers'; they have to mix together, pray together, harp together,
hosannah together - whites, niggers, Jews, everybody - there's no distinction. Here in the earth all nations hate each other,
and every one of them hates the Jew. Yet every pious person adores that Heaven and wants to get into it. He really does.
And when he is in a holy rapture he thinks that if he were only there he would take all the populace to his heart and hug,
and hug, and hug!"
- Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth
* * *
"It [Hinduism] is a good and gentle religion, but inconvenient."
- Mark Twain, Following the Equator
* * *
"India has two million gods, and worships them all. In religion all other countries are paupers; India is the only millionaire."
- Mark Twain, Following the Equator
* * *
"So much blood has been shed by the Church because of an omission from the Gospel: 'Ye shall be indifferent as
to what your neighbor's religion is.' Not mearly tolerant of it, but indifferent to it. Divinity is claimed for
many religions; but no religion is great enough or divine enough to add that new law to its code."
- Mark Twain, a Biography
* * *
"Man is a religious animal. He is the only religious animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion
- several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology
isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to
happiness and heaven. ... The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out
in the hereafter. I wonder why? It seems questionable taste."
- Mark Twain, The Lowest Animal
* * *
"Alas! those good old days are gone, when a murderer could wipe the stain from his name and soothe his
trouble to sleep simply by getting out his blocks and mortar and building an addition to a church."
- Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad
* * *
"Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions ... there was never a country where the majority of the people were
in their secret hearts loyal to any of these institutions."
- Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger
* * *
"The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.
I would not interfere with anyone's religion, either to strengthen it or to weaken it. I am not able to believe one's
religion can affect his hereafter one way or the other, no matter what that religion may be. But it may easily be a
great comfort to him in this life - hence it is a valuable possession to him."
- Mark Twain, a Biography
* * *
"In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand,
and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have
taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing."
- Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain
* * *
"I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man's reasoning powers
are not above the monkey's."
- Mark Twain, Mark Twain in Eruption
* * *
"Man is kind enough when he is not excited by religion."
- Mark Twain, A Horse's Tale
* * *
"Religion consists in a set of things which the average man thinks he believes, and wishes he was certain."
- Mark Twain, Notebook, 1879
* * *
"I was educated, I was trained, I was a Presbyterian and I knew how these thing are done. I knew that in Biblical
times if a man committed a sin the extermination of the whole surrounding nation - cattle and all - was likely to happen.
I knew that Providence was not particular about the rest, so that He [God] got somebody connected with the one He was after."
- Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain
* * *
"We don't cut up when mad men are bred by the old legitimate stock religions, but we can't allow wildcat
religions to indulge in such disastrous experiments."
- Mark Twain, The New Wildcat Religion
* * *
"A religion that comes of thought, and study, and deliberate conviction, sticks best. The revivalized convert
who is scared in the direction of heaven because he sees hell yawn suddenly behind him, not only regains
confidence when his scare is over, but is ashamed of himself for being scared, and often becomes more
hopelessly and malignantly wicked than he was before."
- Mark Twain, Letter to San Francisco, November 15, 1868
* * *
"Apparently one of the most uncertain things in the world is the funeral of a religion."
- Mark Twain, Following the Equator
* * *
"Zeal and sincerity can carry a new religion further than any other missionary except fire and sword."
- Mark Twain, Christian Science
* * *
"I have a religion - but you will call it blasphemy. It is that there is a God for the rich man but none for the poor.
... Perhaps your religion will sustain you, will feed you - I place no dependence on mine. Our religions are alike,
though, in one respect - neither can make a man happy when he is out of luck."
- Mark Twain, Letter to Orion Clemens, October, 1865
* * *
"We have to keep our God placated with prayers, and ever then we are never sure of him - how much higher and
finer is the Indian's God. ... Our illogical God is all-powerful in name, but impotent in fact; the Great Spirit
is not all-powerful, but does the very best he can for his injun and does it free of charge."
- Mark Twain, Marginalia written in copy of Richard Irving Dodge's Our Wild Indians
* * *
"The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."
- George Washington, Treaty of Tripoli, 1796
* * *
"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my
neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
- Thomas Jefferson
* * *
"A substantial portion of Deist literature was devoted to the description of the noxious practices of all religions in all
times. For many religious Deists the teachings of Christ were not essentially novel but were, in reality, as old as creation."
- Encyclopedia Britannica
* * *
"Voltaire gloried in the name Deist. The Catholic Church in 18th-century France did not recognize fine distinctions among
heretics, and Deist and atheist works were burned in the same bonfires."
- Encyclopedia Britannica
* * *
"Benjamin Franklin, the great sage of the colonies and then of the new republic, summarized a personal creed that almost
literally reproduced [Deism's] five fundemental beliefs. The first three presidents of the United States also held Deistic
convictions in their correspondence."
- Encyclopedia Britannica
* * *
"I consider the government of the U.S. as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions,
their doctrines, discipline, or exercises . . . civil powers alone have been given to the President of the U.S. and no
authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents."
- Thomas Jefferson
* * *
"The day that this country ceases to be free for irreligion, it will cease to be free for religion."
- Justice Robert H. Jackson
* * *
"It is much to lament that a man of Dr. Franklin's general good character and great influence, should have been an unbeliever
in Christianity, and also have done so much as he did to make others unbelievers."
- Dr. Joseph Priestly
* * *
"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only to in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that
his wife is beautiful and his children smart."
- H.L. Mencken
* * *
"The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could
not approve the slightest breach."
- Justice Hugo Black
* * *
"In our country are evangelists and zealots of many different political, economic and religious persuasions whose fanatical
conviction is that all thought it divinely classified into two kinds - that which is their own and that which is false and
dangerous."
- Justice Robert H. Jackson
* * *
"Being an Episcopalian interferes neither with my business nor my religion."
- John Kendrick Bangs, 1862
* * *
"The ink of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr."
- Mohammed
* * *
"Many Christians base the belief of a soul and God upon the Bible. Strictly speacking, there is no such book.
To make the Bible, sixty-six books are bound together into one volume. These books are written by many people at
different times, and no one knows the time or identity of any author. Some of the books were written by several
authors at various times. These books contain all sorts of contradictory concepts of life and morals and the origin
of things. Between the first and last nearly a thousand years intervened, a longer time than has passes since the
discovery of America by Columbus."
- Clarence Darrow, Why I Am An Atheist
* * *
"One time, when I was researching Gnosticism in the Britannica, I came across mention of a Gnostic codex called
The Unreal God and the Aspects of His Nonexistent Universe, and idea that reduced me to helpless laughter. What
kind of person would write about something that he knows doesn't exist, and how can something that doesn't exist have
aspects? But then I realized that I'd been writing about these matters for over twenty-five years. I guess there is a
lot of latitude in what you can say when writing about a topic that does not exist. A friend of mine once published a
book called Snakes of Hawaii. A number of libraries wrote him, ordering copies. Well, there are no snakes in
Hawaii. All the pages of his book are blank."
- Philip K. Dick, How To Build A Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later, 1978
* * *
"God help us if the man who translated my novel Ubik into German were to do a translation from the koine
Greek into German of the New Testament. He did all right until he got to the sentence 'I am the word.' That puzzled him.
What can the author mean by that? he must have asked himself, obviously never having come across the Logos doctrine. So
he did as good a job of translation as possible. In the German edition, the Absolute Entity that made the suns, made the
worlds, created the lives and the places they inhabit, says of itself:
I am the brand name.
Had he translated the Gospel according to St. John, I suppose it would have come out as:
When all things began, the brand name already was. The brand name dwelt with God, and what God was, the brand name was.
It would seem that I not only bring you greetings from Disneyland but [also] Moritmer Snerd. Such is the fate of an author
who hoped to include theological themes in his writing. 'The brand name, then, was with God at the beginning, and
through him all things came to be; no single thing was created without him.' So it goes with noble ambitions. Let's hope
God has a sense of humor.
Or should I say, Let's hope the brand name has a sense of humor."
- Philip K. Dick, How To Build A Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later, 1978
* * *
"One god there is, in no way like mortal creatures either in bodily form or in the thought of his mind. The whole of him
sees, the whole of him thinks, the whole of him hears. He stays always motionless in the same place; it is not fitting
that he should move about now this way, now that."
- Xenophanes
* * *
"I could not believe that anyone who has read this book would be so foolish as to proclaim that the Bible in every literal
word was the divinely inspired inerrant word of God. Have these people simply not read the text? Are they hopelessly
uninformed? Is there a different Bible? Are they blinded by a combination of ego needs and naivete?"
- Bishop John Shelby Spong
* * *
"The left-leaning secular humanists will be upset that I spend so much time with the Bible - or that I mention it at all.
They want to throw out the bath water, the baby, and the bathtub of Bible scholarship. The Bible, they argue, is a religious
book and the separation of church and state eliminates any religious book from discussion, be it the Bible, Koran,
Mahabharata, Talmud, or Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
"My point of view - radical as it may be - is that both camps could get a lot from reading the Bible.
"It may seem strange to suggest that the religious right read the Bible. I have found, in fact, that few of them have. My
first question to people who attack personal freedom on biblical grounds is, 'Have you read the Bible? Every word? Cover-to-cover?'
They hate to admit it, but when pressed (after a few avoidance statements such as, 'I know the Bible well,' 'I've studied
the Bible all my life,' or 'I love the Bible,') their answer is usually, 'No.'
"I have had the most amazing discussions with evangelical Christians in which I suggest that they read the book they
are quite often holding in their hands. (Somehow, carrying the book is more important to them than having read
it.) They'll quote chapter and verse, and I'll quote it right back at them. They look it up and find that, lo, I know what
I'm talking about. After being shaken for a moment, however, most restructure their composure and dismiss me by saying,
'The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.'
"'Where's that from?' I'll ask.
"'Somewhere in the Bible, ' they fumble.
"'No,' I say, 'it's from Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act 1, Scene 3, Line 99.'
"I can just hear these people discussing me with their friends later: 'I met one of Satan's legion today! He said the most
terrible thing.'
"'What did he say?'
"'He told me to read the Bible!'
"'Abominable!' their friends gasp, 'What will Satan think of next?'"
- Peter McWilliams, Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in a Free Society, 1993
* * *
"Why don't you judge for yourselves what is right?"
- Jesus of Nazareth, Luke 12:57
* * *
"The Chinese said they would bury me by the Western Lake and build a shrine to my memory. I might have become a god, which
would have been very chic for an atheist."
- Bertrand Russell
* * *
"True religion is real living; living with all one's soul, with all one's goodness and righteousness."
- Albert Einstein
* * *
"Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is."
- Mohandas Gandhi
* * *
"When its a question of money, everybody is of the same religion."
- Voltaire
* * *
"This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our
own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness."
- His Holiness the Dalai Lama
* * *
"No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means."
- George Bernard Shaw
* * *
"The Bible is literature, not dogma."
- George Santayana
* * *
"The Bible is a wonderful source of inspiration for those who don't understand it."
- George Santayana
* * *
"I am halfway through Genesis, and quite appalled by the disgraceful behavior of all the characters involved,
including God."
- J.R. Ackerley
* * *
"A thorough reading and understanding of the Bible is the surest path to atheism."
- Donald Morgan
* * *
"The Bible looks like it started out as a game of Mad Libs."
- Bill Maher
* * *
"Whenever we read the obscene stories, the volumptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting
vindictiveness, with which more than half of the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we should call it
the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind."
- Thomas Paine
* * *
"The next time believers tell you that 'separtation of church and state' does not appear in our founding document,
tell them to stop using the word 'trinity.' The word 'trinity' appears nowhere in the Bible. Neither does rapture,
or second coming, or original sin. If they are still unfazed (or unphrased), by this, then add omniscience, omnipresence,
supernatural, transendence, afterlife, deity, divinity, theology, monotheism, missionary, immaculate conception,
Christmas, Christianity, evangelical, fundamentalist, Methodist, Catholic, pope, cardinal, catechism, purgatory, penance,
tansubstatiation, excommunication, dogma, chastity, unpardonable sin, infallibility, incarnation, epiphany, sermon,
Eucharist, the Lord's Prayer, Good Friday, Doubting Thomas, Advent, Sunday school, Dead Sea, golden rule, moral,
morality, ethics, patriotism, education, atheism, apostasy, conservative (liberal is in), capital punishment, monogamy,
abortion, pornography, homosexual, lesbian, fairness, logic, republic, democracy, capitalism, funeral, Decalogue, or Bible."
- Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist
* * *
"One final snag in the 'Bible only' view is this: the Bible itself teaches that moral truths are revealed outside
the Scriptures."
- C. Stephen Layman, The Shape of the Good: Christian Reflections on the Foundations of Ethics
* * *
"As it happens, Josephus, who mentions John the Baptist, does not mention Jesus. There is, to be sure, a paragraph
in his history of the Jews which is devoted to Jesus, but it interrupts the flow of the discourse and seems suspiciously
like an afterthought. Scholars generally believe this to have been an insertion by some early Christian editor who,
scandalized that Josephus should talk of the period without mentioning the Messiah, felt the insertion to be a pious act."
- Isaac Asimov
* * *
"Among politicians the esteem of religion is profitable; the principles of it are troublesome."
- Benjamin Whichcote, Moreal and Political Aphorisms, 1703
* * *
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
- Blaise Pascal, PenseesM, 1670
* * *
"The world holds two classes of men - intelligent men without religion, and religious men without intelligence."
- Abu'l-Ala-Al-Ma'arri (973-1057) Syrian Poet
* * *
"Liberty, next to religion, has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime..."
- Lord Acton The History of Freedom in Antiquity 1877
* * *
"The common people seem always to have been on the track to social interest, and every intellectual and every religious uprising has been directed against the striving
for power; the logic of the communal life of man has always ended again in the thirst for dominance. All social legislation of the past, the teachings of Christ, and the
tablets of Moses have fallen, again and again, into the hands of power-craving social classes and groups."
- Alfred Adler, Bolshevismus, 1918
* * *
"I have generally been denominated a Deist, the reality of which I never disputed, being conscious I am no Christian, except mere infant baptism makes me one; and as
to being a Deist, I know not strictly speaking, whether I am one or not."
- Ethan Allen, Reason the Only Oracle of Man, preface, first edition, Bennington, Vt., 1784
* * *
"For mankind to hate truth as it may bring their evil deeds to light and punishment, is very easy and common; but to hate truth as truth, or God as God, which is the same
as to hate goodness for its own sake, unconnected with any other consequences, is impossible even to a (premised) diabolical nature."
- Ethan Allen, Reason the Only Oracle of Man 1784
* * *
"Witchcraft and Priestcraft, were introduced into this world together, in its nonage; and has gone on, hand in hand together, until about half a century past, when witchcraft
began to be discredited ... This discovery has depreciated Priestcraft, on the scale of at least fifty per cent per annum..."
- Ethan Allen, Reason the Only Oracle of Man 1784
* * *
"Religion: a fantastic faith in gods, angels and spirits... a faith without any scientific foundations, Religion is being supported and maintained by the reactionary circles.
It serves for the subjugation of the working people and building up the power of the exploiting bourgeuois classes."
- Dictionary of 20,000 foreign words and phrases, Soviet State Publishing House, quoted, Time, January 29, 1951.
* * *
"Bible: A collection of fantastic legends without any scientific support ... full of dark hints, historical mistakes and contradictions."
- Dictionary of 20,000 foreign words and phrases, Soviet State Publishing House, quoted, Time, January 29, 1951.
* * *
"Speak the truth and shame the Devil."
- Francois Rabelais
* * *
"Unfortunately, all who investigated became believers and therefore unreliable witnesses."
- T.J. Hudson, discussing investigators of spirit phenomena The Laws of Psychic Phenomenon 1893
* * *
"The American people wants a president that
appeals to the angels..."
- George W. Bush in his speech during the GOP convention.
Aug/2000
* * *
"I do not like the late resurection of the Jesuits... If ever any congregation men could merit eternal perdition on earth, and in hell, according to these historians, though,
like Pascal, true Catholics, it is this company of Loyolas."
- John Adams, letter to Jefferson, May 5, 1816
* * *
"My History of the Jesuits is not elegantly written, but is supported by unquestionable authorities, is very particular and very horrible. Their restoration is indeed 'a step
toward darkness,' cruelty, perfidy, despotism, death, and - ! I wish we were out of danger of bigotry and Jesuitism."
- John Adams, letter to Jefferson, August 9, 1816
* * *
"My History of the Jesuits is in four volumes... This society has been a greater calamity to mankind than the French Revolution, or Napoleon's despotism or ideology. It has
obstructed progress of reformation and the improvement of the human mind in society much longer and more fatally."
- John Adams, letter to Jefferson, November 4, 1816
* * *
"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, Letter to F.A. Van der Kamp, December 27, 1816
* * *
"As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion, - as it has itself no character of enmity against the law, religion
or tranquility of Musselmen, ..."
- John Adams, Article 11, Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the United States and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli of Barbary. Treaties and Other International
Acts of the United States of America. Edited by Hunter Miller. Vol 2. 1776-1818. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington D.C., 1931; p. 365.
* * *
"What havoc has been made of books through every century of the Christian era? Where are the 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 (2nd President of the United States) Letter to John Taylor, The Life and Works of John Adams, Boston, 1851, v. 6, p. 479.
* * *
"If you have two religions in your land, the two will cut each other's throats; but if you have thirty religions, they
will dwell in peace."
– Voltaire
* * *
