WIST Quotations

Swift, Jonathan -- “Thoughts on Religion” (1726)

Dave — Mon, 13 Feb 2023 18:36:39 +0000

I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular, but some degree of persecution.

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) English writer and churchman
“Thoughts on Religion” (1726)
(Source)

Jefferson, Thomas -- Letter (1819-06-25) to Ezra Styles Ely

Dave — Mon, 10 Oct 2022 14:24:45 +0000

It is the speculations of crazy theologists which have made a Babel of a religion the most moral and sublime ever preached to man, and calculated to heal, and not to create differences. These religious animosities I impute to those who call themselves his ministers, and who engraft their casuistries on the stock of his simple precepts. I am sometimes more angry with them than is authorised by the blessed charities which he preached.

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801–09)
Letter (1819-06-25) to Ezra Styles Ely
(Source)

Hazlitt, William -- “On the Clerical Character,” Conclusion (7 Feb 1818)

Dave — Thu, 03 Mar 2022 16:01:11 +0000

The garb of religion is the best cloak for power.

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer
“On the Clerical Character,” Conclusion (7 Feb 1818)
(Source)

Dryden, John -- “The Character of a Good Parson,” l. 77, Fables (1700)

Dave — Tue, 02 Jun 2015 13:16:59 +0000

His preaching much, but more his practice wrought;
(A living sermon of the truths he taught).

John Dryden (1631–1700) English poet, dramatist, critic
“The Character of a Good Parson,” l. 77, Fables (1700)

Jefferson, Thomas -- Letter (1801) to Moses Robinson

Dave — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 15:14:57 +0000

The Christian religion when divested of the rags in which they [the clergy] have inveloped it, and brought to the original purity & simplicity of it’s benevolent institutor, is a religion of all others most friendly to liberty, science, & the freest expansions of the human mind.

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801–09)
Letter (1801) to Moses Robinson
(Source)

Jefferson, Thomas -- Letter (1800-08-189) to Jeremiah Moor

Dave — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 12:54:30 +0000

The clergy, by getting themselves established by law, & ingrafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil & religious rights of man.

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801–09)
Letter (1800-08-189) to Jeremiah Moor
(Source)

Jefferson, Thomas -- Letter (1820-04-11) to José Corrêa da Serra

Dave — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 12:10:05 +0000

… [P]riests of the different religious sects, who dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of day-light; and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversion of the duperies on which they live.

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801–09)
Letter (1820-04-11) to José Corrêa da Serra
(Source)

On resistance, particularly from Presbyterians, to the founding of the University of Virginia.

Jefferson, Thomas -- Letter (1814-03-17) to Horatio G. Spafford

Dave — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 23:54:39 +0000

In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the Despot abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. it is easier to acquire wealth and power by this combination than by deserving them: and to effect this they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man, into mystery & jargon unintelligible to all mankind & therefore the safer engine for their purposes.

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801–09)
Letter (1814-03-17) to Horatio G. Spafford
(Source)

Shakespeare, William -- Hamlet, Act 1, sc. 3, l. 50ff (1.3.50-55) (c. 1600)

Dave — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 13:18:35 +0000

OPHELIA:But, good my brother,
Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,
Whiles, like a puffed and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads
And recks not his own rede.

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English dramatist and poet
Hamlet, Act 1, sc. 3, l. 50ff (1.3.50-55) (c. 1600)
(Source)

Austen, Jane -- Mansfield Park, ch. 9 [Edmund Bertram] (1814)

Dave — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:43:47 +0000

It will, I believe, be everywhere found, that as the clergy are, or are not what they ought to be, so are the rest of the nation.

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English author
Mansfield Park, ch. 9 [Edmund Bertram] (1814)
(Source)

Diderot, Denis -- Poem (1772), “Les Éleuthéromanes”

Dave — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:38:04 +0000

And his hands would plait the priest’s entrails,
For want of a rope, to strangle kings.

[Et ses mains ourdiraient les entrailles du prêtre,
Au défaut d’un cordon pour étrangler les rois.]

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French editor, philosopher
Poem (1772), “Les Éleuthéromanes”
(Source)

The work is also sometimes referred to as "Dithrambe sur fête de rois."

(Source (French)). Other translations:

And his hands would plait a priest's entrails;
In lieu of a rope for strangling kings.
[Source]

His hands would plait the priest’s guts,
if he had no rope, to strangle kings.
[E.g.]

Jean-François de La Harpe, Lycée, ou Cours de Littérature Ancienne et Moderne (1822), attributes this variant to Diderot as the "crowning touch" of his philosophy:

With the guts of the last priest,
Let us strangle the last king

[Et des boyaux du dernier prêtre
Serrons le cou du dernier roi.]

Alternately:

And [with] the guts of the last priest
Let's shake the neck of the last king.
[E.g.]

This phrasing of Diderot's is most likely derived from a passage by Jean Meslier (c. 1664–1733), a French priest. In his Testament [Common Sense], Vol. 1, ch. 2 [ed. Charles (1864)], he told (and approved) of an "ignorant, uneducated man" who said (English, French):

He said he wished [...] that all the great men in the world and all the nobility could be hanged, and strangled with the guts of priests.

[Il souhaitoit [...] que tous les grands de la terre et que tous les nobles fussent pendus et étranglés avec les boïaux des prêtres.]

Other translations of Meslier:

His wish was that all the rulers of the earth and all the nobles be hanged and strangled with the guts of priests.
[tr. Shreve (2009)]

Bill Brown, the 2007 translator of Veneigem's The Resistance to Christianity (1993), noted that Voltaire, who edited an early edition of Meslier's Testament, rewrote the passage to provide another French variant (with Brown's English translation):

I would like, and this would be the last and most ardent of my wishes, I would like it that the last king was strangled with the guts of the last priest.

[Je voudrais, et ce sera le dernier et le plus ardent de mes souhaits, je voudrais que le dernier des rois fût etranglé avec les boyaux du dernier prêtre.]

Other variants, in general:

"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest."
"Humanity will only be happy when the last priest has been hung with the guts of the last prince."

Adams, John -- Letter (1815-01-24) to John Taylor

Dave — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 10:22:12 +0000

The Priesthood, have in all ancient Nations, nearly monopolized Learning. Read over again all the Accounts We have of Hindoos Chaldeans, Persians Greeks, Romans, Celts, Teutons, We Shall find that Priests had all the Knowledge, and really governed all Mankind. Examine Mahometanism Trace Christianity from its first Promulgation, Knowledge has been almost exclusively confined to the Clergy. And even since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or dissenting Sect, who would tolerate, A free Inquiry? The blackest Billingate, the most ungentlemanly insolenc, the most yahooish brutality, is patiently endured countenanced propagated and applauded: But touch a solemn Truth in collission with a dogma of a Sect, though capable of the clearest proof; and you will Soon find you have disturbed a Nest, and the hornets will swarm about your legs and hands and fly into your face and Eyes.

John Adams (1735–1826) American lawyer, Founding Father, statesman, US President (1797–1801)
Letter (1815-01-24) to John Taylor
(Source)

Jefferson, Thomas -- Letter (1800-09-23) to Benjamin Rush

Dave — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 16:00:00 +0000

The clergy … believe that any portion of power confided to me will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly: for I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough, too, in their opinion ….

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801–09)
Letter (1800-09-23) to Benjamin Rush
(Source)

On members of the clergy who had "a very favorite hope of obtaining an establishment of a particular form of Christianity thro' the U. S.; and as every sect believes its own form the true one, every one perhaps hoped for his own, but especially the Episcopalians & Congregationalists."

Usually elided to: "I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo -- Essay (1841), “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series, No. 2

Dave — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 19:00:00 +0000

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
Essay (1841), “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series, No. 2
(Source)

This thought continues here.

This essay was inspired by his reading of Walter Savage Landor in 1833, with passages pulled from his lecture "Individualism," last in his course on "The Philosophy of History" (1836–1837), with other passages from the lectures "School," "Genius," and "Duty" in his course on "Human Life" (1838–1839).