February 15, 2009
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Quotations on Religious Freedom
The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion.”
Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason“The Government of the United States is not in any sense founded upon the Christian Religion.”
1797 Treaty of Tripoli, signed by President George Washington, and approved by the Senate of the United States“The Bible was established altogether by the sword, and that in the worst use of it – - not to terrify but to extirpate.”
Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason“When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, ’tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.”
Benjamin Franklin, statesman, inventor, author, in a Letter to Dr. Price“Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error. Give a loose to them, they will support the true religion by bringing every false one to their tribunal, to the test of their investigation. They are the natural enemies of error, and of error only.”
Thomas Jefferson, 1785“I am tolerant of all creeds. Yet if any sect suffered itself to be used for political objects I would meet it by political opposition. In my view church and state should be separate, not only in form, but fact. Religion and politics should not be mingled.”
Millard Fillmore (1809-1865) 13th U.S. President, address during the 1856 presidential election“Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in us. Our defense is in the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you will have planted the seeds of despotism at your own doors. Familiarize yourself with the chains of bondage, and you prepare your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of others, you have lost the genius of your own independence and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tryant who rises among you.”
Abraham Lincoln, Speech at Edwardsville, IL, 1858.“Let us labor for the security of free thought, free speech, pure morals, unfettered religious sentiments, and equal rights and privileges for all men, irrespective of nationality, color, or religion;…. leave the matter of religious teaching to the family altar, the church, and the private school, supported entirely by private contribution. Keep church and state forever separate.”
Ulysses S. Grant’s Speech to G. A. R. Veterans, at Des Moines, IA 1875.“Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither justice nor freedom can be permanently maintained. Its interests are intrusted to the States and the voluntary action of the people. Whatever help the nation can justly afford should be generously given to aid the States in supporting common schools; but it would be unjust to our people and dangerous to our institutions to apply any portion of the revenues of the nation or of the States to the support of sectarian schools. The separation of Church and State in everything relating to taxation should be absolute.”
James A. Garfield, Letter of Acceptance of Nomination for the Presidency July 12, 1880“To discriminate against a thoroughly upright citizen because he belongs to some particular church, or because, like Abraham Lincoln, he has not avowed his allegiance to any church, is an outrage against the liberty of conscience, which is one of the foundations of American life.”
Theodore Roosevelt, letter on religious liberty“As I say, not all of Jefferson’s ideas were popular, though most of them were absolutely right.…He was also called an atheist because he didn’t believe in a state church, an official church of the government, and in fact made it clear that he didn’t much like any church at all, though he did admire many, though not all, of the teachings of religion.…And you’ll recall that it was Jefferson, as governor of Virginia, who wrote the Statute of Religious Liberty in 1786, which said that ‘no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship’ but that all people ‘shall be free to profess…their opinion in matters of religion.’ He summed up very bluntly one time his view that no man harmed anyone else in choosing and practicing his own religion, or no religion. ‘It does me no injury,’ he said, ‘for my neighbor to say that there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.’”
Harry S. Truman (1884-1972) 33rd U.S. President“The Middle Ages were an era of mysticism, ruled by blind faith and blind obedience to the dogma that faith is superior to reason. The Renaissance was specifically the rebirth of reason, the liberation of man’s mind, the triumph of rationality over mysticism—a faltering, incomplete, but impassioned triumph that led to the birth of science, of individualism, of freedom.”
Ayn Rand“…a religion-neutral government does not fit with an America that reflects belief in God in everything from its money to its military.”
Antonin ScaliaUnfortunately, Justice Scalia believes that the mis-fit should be adjusted by changing the Constitution, not by changing the military and the money. Who appointed that moronic asshole to the Supreme Court, anyway?
