“[About the Golden Rule ] But by whatever combination of rational and emotive we ourselves understand - and feel- it best, whether we elevate it to a religious principle or reduce it to simple good manners, whether we honor it in the breach or not at all, it is the foundation of civilised social life.”

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 617.

Letter to Nicolas Gouin Dufief, Philadelphia bookseller (1814) who had been prosecuted for selling the book Sur la Création du Monde, un Systême d'Organisation Primitive by M. de Becourt, which Jefferson himself had purchased.
1810s
Context: I am really mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, a fact like this can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too, as an offence against religion; that a question about the sale of a book can be carried before the civil magistrate. Is this then our freedom of religion? and are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule for what we are to read, and what we must believe? It is an insult to our citizens to question whether they are rational beings or not, and blasphemy against religion to suppose it cannot stand the test of truth and reason.

Commentary on the Song of Songs, As translated by Margaret M. Mitchell in Paul, the Corinthians and the Birth of Christian Hermeneutics (2010)

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Red Prophet (1988), Chapter 17.

The Thirteenth Revelation, Chapter 40

"Quotes", The Educated Imagination (1963), Talk 6: The Vocation of Eloquence

Speech to the Empire Parliamentary Association's Conference in Westminster Hall (4 July 1935); published in This Torch of Freedom: Speeches and Addresses (1935), pp. 5-6.
1935