Anne Royall Quotes

Good work instead of long prayers.

The late proceedings of those daring invaders to establish a national religion have opened the eyes of all lovers of liberty and religion… I have been told they have thrown off the mask and are preaching to the people to elect none but godly men to represent them in the General and State Legislatures; … what they mean by godly people, is people of their own stamp.

If those millions squandered on designing missionaries had been deposited in funds for the support of yourselves, when old age, misfortune, or sickness (from which none are exempt,) overtakes you, or for the distressed of your race, what a heaven of happiness you would have created on earth: ye would now be an ornament to your sex, and ages to come would call you blessed. But it is in vain to try – a priest-ridden female is lost to reason. Why? because she has surrendered her reason to the … missionaries … the orthodox; they are the grand deceivers.

[G]et two-thirds of the states to alter the Constitution; come out with their national religion, and then let the people get their throats ready.

Fanaticism and bigotry require any food but common sense and reason, which would break the charm of those spellbound fanatics.

May the arm of the first member of Congress, who proposes a national religion, drop powerless from his shoulder; his tongue cleave to the roof of his mouth and all the people say amen.

In all countries, and in all ages, from the Druids down to brother Beecher, priests have aimed at universal power.

I find that the whole weight of relieving human misery and distress falls on the shoulders of those Heretics and Infidels; and though great part of this distress has been occasioned by those ravening wolves’ hopeful converts.

Free thought, free speech and a free press.

Figures cannot calculate the amount collected by those public and private robbers: it is more than would liberate every slave in the United States; it would pay the British debt! They say, We do not force people to give. I see no difference between forcing a man out of his money, at the mouth of a pistol, and forcing it from by trick and cunning; the crime is the same.