"We hold these truths to be self-evidence, that all men are created equal.  That they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights . . ." - The Declaration of Independence

"God who gave us life gave us liberty.  And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the Gift of God?  That they are not to be violated but with His wrath?  Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever." - Query XVII, Notes on the State of Virginia (excerpts of those statements are on the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C.)

"No power over the freedom of religion . . . (is) delegated to the United States by the Constitution." - The Kentucky Resolution, 1798

"The Christian religion, when divested of the rags in which they (the clergy) have enveloped it, and brought to the original purity and simplicity of its benevolent institutor, is a religion of all others most friendly to liberty, science, and the freest expansion of the human mind." - A letter to Moses Robinson, March 23, 1801

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with solemn 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 of Church and State." - A letter to the Danbury Baptists, January 1, 1802