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About this quote

What does it mean?
Jefferson views religion as strictly between man and his maker.
In plain terms
Public or government should not interfere in religion.
What can you take from it?
Keep religion private between the individual and God.

Where it applies

  • governance
  • personal faith
  • law

Putting it to work

  • religious liberty
  • separation of church and state

Questions to consider

  • Should government touch religion?
  • Where is the boundary?

Another view

Religion often enters political debate regardless.

More from Thomas Jefferson

  1. 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…

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  2. The whole history of these books is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their…

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  3. I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.

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