“Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise.”~ James Madison

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

“God is an essence that we know nothing of. Until this awful blasphemy is got rid of, there will never be any liberal science in the world.” ~ John Adams

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

“In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty.  He is always in alliance with the despot … they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer engine for their purpose.” ~ Thomas Jefferson

“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship,  that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between church and State.” ~ Thomas Jefferson

“Lighthouses are more helpful than churches.” ~ Benjamin Franklin

“The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason.”~ 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

“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