Divine Justice Quotes
This famous quotation has been attributed to Voltaire, 1694-1778, and French Philosopher, Denis Diderot, 1713-1784. Most quotation collections erroneously attribute it to Diderot in the version “Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.” Both Voltaire and Diderot used the quotation as did many others opposed to monarchy and the then repressive church hierarchies. But the origin of the famous phrase was with Meslier. When the priest died, three handwritten manuscripts were found written and signed by him in which he attacked religion in general and the church and the Bible in particular. His Testament was read by Voltaire and Denis Diderot among others and he was very influential in their development as opponents of organized religion.
This is a very interesting quotation in that it began as a bogus quotation. Someone made it up and posted it on the internet. Soon it had been picked up by many of the Internet quotation sites which just “scrape” other sites and do no research themselves. Soon it was all over the internet. When he appeared on Meet the Press, Tim Russert asked him about the attribution. He then embraced the quotation as representing his real feelings. In the area of the Internet, this phenomenon has been possible and in this case actually happened.
Jefferson wrote his friend that the New England clergy had opposed him because he would block their efforts to merge church and state. Inscribed in the rotunda of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington DC. The third sentence is often quoted without the first two.
