Ersatz Jefferson

Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have ... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.  Thomas Jefferson

Next to Benjamin Franklin TJ is prolly the most quoted founding father; especially today when we're all looking for encouragement to throw this government away and feed the  tree of liberty with its red juices.  Except —  Thomas Jefferson never said that "...Government big enough ..." .  The  quotation is actually from an address by President Gerald Ford to the US Congress (12 August 1974). Atheist activists quite often use spurious Jefferson quotes to advance their agenda.  The most notable being  the snippet " building a wall of separation between church and State." to justify attacks on religion.  The full quote comes from a letter he wrote to a Baptist group in Danbury, CT. Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign 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 between church and State.¹ Just the opposite of what the religious left portends.  Another quote they like is this:  The Christian god is a three headed monster; cruel, vengeful and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging, three headed beast-like god, one only needs to look at the caliber of people who say they serve him. They are always of two classes: fools and hypocrites. Ahem. -- Quotation 'Not Found,' popularly alleged to have been in a letter to his nephew, Peter Carr. Our editor, Cliff Walker, checked "by hand" every letter to Peter Carr included in the Multomah County Library's reader copy of Jefferson's Works and found nothing along these lines in any such letter. I don't expect everyone to have a PhD in Quotery like me, so let me recommend Monticello.org's Spurious Quotations, and extended references from Tom Jefferson Wiki Quote.  With Obama around, this is also a good reference. ¹ Wiki Quote