“History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.”

“A nation which expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, expects that which never was and never will be.”

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”

“Our civil rights have no dependence upon our religious opinions more than our opinions in physics or geometry.”

“Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government”

“no people can be both ignorant and free.”

“A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circlue of our felicities.”