Had the doctrines of Jesus been preached always as pure as they came from his lips, the whole civilized world would now have been Christians.

Our minds and hearts are free to believe everything or nothing at all - and it is our duty to protect and perpetuate this sacred culture of freedom.

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.

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.

To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself.

I leave the world and its affairs to the young and energetic, and resign myself to their care, of whom I have endeavored to take care when young.

Well aware that the opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds; that Almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested his supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion.