• What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.... [Instead] reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments. To make way for these, free enquiry must be indulged; and how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse it ourselves?

    Thomas Jefferson: What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth....  [Instead] reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments. To make way for these, free enquiry must be indulged; and how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse it ourselves?
    "Notes on the State of Virginia". Book by Thomas Jefferson, 1781-1783.