Quotes on Religion and Government

The Founders on Separation of Church and State

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, 1802, quoted in Andrew A. Lipscomb's Writings 16:281

The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.

-- Article XI of the Treaty of Tripoli, ratified by the U.S. Senate and signed by President John Adams in 1797; quoted in Hunter Miller's Treaties 2:365