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In July 2022, readers asked us to look into the veracity of quotes that appeared in a meme titled, Damn Those Pesky Facts. The meme had been shared on Facebook and displayed several quotes about Christianity and religion that purportedly came from four men, three who were Founding Fathers. The names shown above the remarks included former U.S. Presidents Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and James Madison, as well as author Thomas Paine. We recommend checking the facts before bragging about having them. In our research, we were able to find plenty of websites that hosted all of the quotes that were included in the meme. However, websites that do nothing but collect famous quotes are not usually reliable sources for research. In order to establish definitive confirmation for each quote, we looked at centuries-old literature as well as other credible sources. In two cases, we reached out to researchers for more information. Our findings concluded with the fact that the meme was neither wholly true nor false. Many books have been written about the lives and thoughts about religion regarding the four men featured in the meme. For the purpose of this story, we will primarily concentrate on fact-checking each individual quote. The first quote, which was attributed to Jefferson, who served as the third U.S. president, read, Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law. This was a genuine quote that came from Jefferson's work titled, Reports of Cases Determined in the General Court of Virginia. According to Encyclopedia Virginia, common law referred to a tradition preserved by courts through precedent. The full quote read as follows: The second quote with Jefferson's name next to it said, Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man. According to Monticello.org, a website that is managed by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Inc., this was a paraphrase of something Jefferson wrote in 1801 to a clergyman, political theorist, and physical scientist named Joseph Priestley. The quote was transcribed like this: The final quote that was attributed to Jefferson in the Damn Those Pesky Facts meme read, Religions are all alike - founded upon fables and mythologies. According to Monticello.org, there's no known record of him ever saying these words. The meme featured two quotes from Adams, who served as the country's second president. The first quote read, The government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion. This quote came from the Treaty of Peace and Friendship from 1796, also known as the Treaty with Tripoli. The treaty was one of many made with the Barbary states around the turn of the century, usconstitution.net published. At the time, U.S. ships had been the victim of costly attacks by the Barbary states for many years. The treaty in 1796 was part of an effort to put a stop to the piracy. After the agreement was negotiated, Joel Barlow, an American diplomat, translated the treaty from Arabic to English. Article 11 of the treaty was translated as follows: The document was initially signed by several parties in 1796. At the time, Washington was the president. In 1797, Adams signed it in his first year of his only presidential term. To sum it up, there's no evidence that Adams wrote the words in the treaty. However, he did sign his approval of the document. The second Adams' quote in the Damn Those Pesky Facts meme read, The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or Mohammedan nation. We found that this quote has also been attributed to former U.S. President George Washington, not Adams. This felt a bit like a red flag to us that perhaps the quote did not really come from Adams, or maybe either of the men at all. For example, we found that the following was published in the 1878 work titled, The Shaker Manifesto: This was published in an 1878 periodical, so that makes it reliable, right? Not quite. We noticed that it was strangely difficult to find in any other literature at the time. This made us skeptical that there was enough evidence to definitively say the quote was genuine. We reached out to the team with Washington's estate at MountVernon.org to see if they had resources that could help establish if Washington truly said or wrote these words, as it appeared it did not come from Adams. In response, one of its staff told us that it appeared to be a poorly paraphrased and modified text from the same Treaty of Peace and Friendship from 1796 that was mentioned in the previous quote. (Separately, they pointed us to a different quote from 1790 that is believed to perhaps be Washington's most important remarks regarding freedom of religion and religious tolerance.) The third person shown in the Damn Those Pesky Facts meme was Thomas Paine. The writer is perhaps best known for his pamphlet titled, Common Sense. The quote in the meme that was attributed to Paine read, Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent than we called it the word of a demon than the word of God. It has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind. This was a genuine quote from Paine's 1794 work, The Age of Reason. Madison's first quote in the meme read, Religion and government will both exist in greater purity the less they are mixed together. According to the National Archives, this was a genuine quote from a letter Madison wrote to Edward Livingston on July 10, 1822. The letter twice included the words greater purity. Here's the context surrounding this real quote: The final quote in the Damn Those Pesky Facts meme claimed that Madison once said or wrote, The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries. We found reason to doubt this quote's authenticity. For example, a search of Google Books showed that the quote didn't appear in any known literature before 1994. We reached out to a researcher with the Montpelier historic site to receive further clarification. Montpelier is described on the organization's website as a memorial to James Madison and the Enslaved Community, a museum of American history, and a center for constitutional education that engages the public with the enduring legacy of Madison's most powerful idea: government by the people. By email, Hilarie M. Hicks, Montpelier's director of museum programs, said that the quote was believed to be spurious, which meant that it was likely fake. Hicks provided the following information: In sum, we rated the claim that the Damn Those Pesky Facts meme was reliable with a rating of Mixture. The meme showed eight quotes, each of which was attributed to one of four men. The quotes were not collectively true or false.
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