The Mind Must Be Freed from the Tyranny of Censoring Governments: “I Have Sworn Upon the Altar of God Eternal Hostility to Every Form of Tyranny over the Mind of Man”

But Jefferson was so impressed with the last words of the “epitaph,” whatever their origin, that he tried to have them adopted as Virginia's motto and, failing that, adopted them as the personal motto surrounding the monogram on his seal: “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.” Later Jefferson was to express a similar idea in even more memorable words of his own: “I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility to every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” Freedom of the mind was, to him, at least as vital as freedom of speech and press. The mind must be freed from the tyranny of censoring governments, but it must be freed also from the domination of ignorance and superstition.

--Alf J. Mapp Jr., Thomas Jefferson: America's Paradoxical Patriot (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2008), 174.