All Religions Must Be Tolerated For

Frederick wrote this as a marginal note on a petition regarding the civic rights of Roman Catholics, recorded as a Cabinet Order of June 22, 1740 — just weeks after ascending to the Prussian throne. It was a radical statement for its era: the Peace of Westphalia (1648) had established the principle that a ruler determined his subjects' religion, and genuine state neutrality among faiths was rare. The Smithsonian American Art Museum later incorporated the full quotation into a 1961 bronze relief by Luise Kaish in its series on great ideas of Western civilization. Frederick's friendship with Voltaire and his reading of the French philosophes reinforced his deist skepticism toward institutional religion.