Reply #52: Let's see what they actually said

[SCantiGOP]

"This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it."
-John Adams

"Ecclesiastical establishments tend to great ignorance and corruption, all of which facilitate the execution of mischievous projects."
-James Madison

"Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced an inch towards 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

"I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature."
-Thomas Jefferson

"When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself so that its professors are obliged to call for the help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one."
-Benjamin Franklin

"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is my own Church. Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all."
-Thomas Paine

The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity.
-John Adams, U.S. President

This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.
-John Adams, U.S. President

The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.
-John Adams, U.S. President

Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it.
-John Adams, U.S. President

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, U.S. President

Have you considered that system of holy lies and pious frauds that has raged and triumphed for 1500 years.
-John Adams, U.S. President

The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles.
-John Adams, U.S. President

I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life, I absenteed myself from Christian assemblies.
-Benjamin Franklin

Lighthouses are more helpful then churches.
-Benjamin Franklin

Revelation indeed had no weight with me.
-Benjamin Franklin

The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason.
-Benjamin Franklin

When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.
-Benjamin Franklin

Question with boldness even the existance of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.
-Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President

Religions are all alike; founded upon fables and mythologies.
-Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President

I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature.
-Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President

Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man.
-Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President

The Christian God can be easily pictured as virtually the same as the many ancient gods of past civilizations. The Christian god is a three headed monster; cruel, evil and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging, three headed, beast-like god, one only needs to look at the caliber of the people who say they serve him. The are always of two classes: fools and hypocrites.
-Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President

On the dogmas of religion, as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been quarreling, fighting, burning and torturing one another for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind.
-Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President

We discover in the gospels a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstition, fanaticism and fabrication.
-Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President

The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being of His Father, in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.
-Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President

The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma.
-Abraham Lincoln, U.S. President

During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution.
-James Madison, U.S. President

In no instance have . . . the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people.
-James Madison, U.S. President

Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise.
-James Madison, U.S. President

Whenever we read the obscene stores, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we 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, American revolutionary

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
-Thomas Paine, American revolutionary

The age of ignorance commenced with the Christian system.
-Thomas Paine, American revolutionary

The United States of America should have a foundation free from the influence of clergy.".
-George Washington, Revolutionary War General and U.S. President

Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause.
-George Washington, Revolutionary War General and U.S. President