“One of the amendments to the Constitution... expressly declares that 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press,' thereby guarding in the same sentence and under the same words, the freedom of religion, of speech, and of the press; insomuch that whatever violates either throws down the sanctuary which covers the others.” --Thomas Jefferson: Draft Kentucky Resolutions, 1798.
“Among the most inestimable of our blessings, also, is that... of liberty to worship our Creator in the way we think most agreeable to His will; a liberty deemed in other countries incompatible with good government and yet proved by our experience to be its best support.” --Thomas Jefferson to John Thomas et al., 1807
“The constitutional freedom of religion [is] the most inalienable and sacred of all human rights.” --Thomas Jefferson: University of Virginia Board of Visitors Minutes, 1819
“We are all created by the same Great Spirit; children of the same family. Why should we not live then as brothers ought to do?” -- Thomas Jefferson to the Delaware & Shawanee Nations, February 10, 1802
“He who steadily observes the 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 to William Canby, April 12, 1803
“I am a Christian, in the only sense in which he wished anyone to be: sincerely attached to his doctrines in preference to all others, ascribing to himself every human excellence, and believing he never claimed any other.” – Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Rush, April 21, 1803
“To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself.” --Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Rush, September 18, 1813 “It is in our lives, and not from our words, that our religion must be read.” --Thomas Jefferson to Mrs. Harrison Smith, August 6, 1816
“I hold the precepts of Jesus, as delivered by himself, to be the most pure, benevolent, and sublime which have ever been preached to man. I adhere to the principles of the first age; and consider all subsequent innovations as corruptions of his religion, having no foundation in what came from him. . . . If the freedom of religion, guaranteed to us by law in theory, can ever rise in practice under the overbearing inquisition of public opinion, truth will prevail over fanaticism, and the genuine doctrines of Jesus, so long perverted by his pseudo-priests, will again be restored to their original purity. This reformation will advance with the other improvements of the human mind but too late for me to witness it.” --Thomas Jefferson to Jared Sparks, 4 November 1820
“The genuine and simple religion of Jesus will one day be restored: such as it was preached and practised by himself.” --Thomas Jefferson to Van der Kemp, 1820
“But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with all this artificial scaffolding, and restore us to the primitive and genuine doctrines of [Jesus] this the most venerated reformer of human errors.” --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, April 11, 1823
“Adore God. Reverence and cherish your parents. Love your neighbor as yourself, and your country more than yourself. Be just. Be true. Murmur not at the ways of Providence. So shall the life into which you have entered, be the portal to one of eternal and ineffable bliss.” -- Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Jefferson Smith, 1825
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