“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.”

— Thomas Jefferson

Letter to Alexander von Humboldt (6 December 1813) Scanned letter at The Library of Congress http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=mtj1&fileName=mtj1page047.db&recNum=74&itemLink=/ammem/mtjhtml/mtjser1.html&linkText=7 Transcript at The Library of Congress http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/mtj:@field(DOCID+@lit(tj110127)) 1810s

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3rd President of the United States of America 1743–1826

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“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.”

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