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| On Religion and Morality |
| "And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as 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 to John Adams April 11, 1823 |
| "[A] long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason." ~ Thomas Paine, Common Sense February 14, 1776 |
| "This is what you shall do: ... argue not concerning God, ... re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your soul, and your flesh shall be a great poem[.]" ~ Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass 1855 |
| "When a Religion is good, I conceive that it will support itself; and, when it cannot support itself, and God does not take care to support, so that its Professors are oblig'd to call for the help of the Civil Power, it is a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one." ~ Benjamin Franklin to Richard Price October 9, 1780 |
| I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance, or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others. ~ Thomas Jefferson to Edward Dowse April 19, 1803 |
| "There has been only one Christian. They caught him and crudified him - early." ~ Mark Twain, Notebook 1898 |
| "The Bible is a book that has been read more, and examined less, than any book that ever existed." ~ Thomas Paine |
| "I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires." ~Susan B. Anthony, 1896 |