Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quote Share via Email Print this Page [281-300] of 495 Religion quotesReligion QuotesReligion Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes My ancestors were Puritans from England. They arrived here in 1648 in the hope of finding greater restrictions than were permissible under English law at that time.~ Garrison Keillor As long as man remains an inquiring animal, there can never be a complete unanimity in our fundamental beliefs. The more diverse our paths, the greater is likely to be the divergence of beliefs.~ Sir Arthur Keith Respondents argue, in effect, that legislative prayer may be addressed only to a generic God. The law and the Court could not draw this line for each specific prayer or seek to require ministers to set aside their nuanced and deeply personal beliefs for vague and artificial ones. There is doubt, in any event, that consensus might be reached as to what qualifies as generic or nonsectarian.~ Justice Anthony Kennedy The decidedly Christian nature of these prayers must not be dismissed as the relic of a time when our Nation was less pluralistic than it is today. Congress continues to permit its appointed and visiting chaplains to express themselves in a religious idiom. … To hold that invocations must be nonsectarian would force the legislatures … and the courts … to act as … censors of religious speech. … Government may not mandate a civic religion that stifles any but the most generic reference to the sacred any more than it may prescribe a religious orthodoxy …~ Justice Anthony Kennedy From the earliest days of the Nation, these invocations have been addressed to assemblies comprising many different creeds. … Our tradition assumes that adult citizens, firm in their own beliefs, can tolerate and perhaps appreciate a ceremonial prayer delivered by a person of a different faith.~ Justice Anthony Kennedy Respondents maintain that prayer must be nonsectarian … and they fault the town for permitting guest chaplains to deliver prayers that ‘use overtly Christian terms’ or ‘invoke specifics of Christian theology.’ … An insistence on nonsectarian or ecumenical prayer as a single, fixed standard is not consistent with the tradition of legislative prayer. … The Congress that drafted the First Amendment would have been accustomed to invocations containing explicitly religious themes of the sort respondents find objectionable. One of the Senate’s first chaplains, the Rev. William White, gave prayers in a series that included the Lord’s Prayer, the Collect for Ash Wednesday, prayers for peace and grace, a general thanksgiving, St. Chrysostom’s Prayer, and a prayer seeking ‘the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, &c …'~ Justice Anthony Kennedy While these prayers vary in their degree of religiosity, they often seek peace for the Nation, wisdom for its lawmakers, and justice for its people, values that count as universal and that are embodied not only in religious traditions, but in our founding documents and laws. … The first prayer delivered to the Continental Congress by the Rev. Jacob Duché on Sept. 7, 1774, provides an example: ‘Be Thou present O God of Wisdom and direct the counsel of this Honorable Assembly; enable them to settle all things on the best and surest foundations; that the scene of blood may be speedily closed; that Order, Harmony, and Peace be effectually restored, and the Truth and Justice, Religion and Piety, prevail and flourish among the people. Preserve the health of their bodies, and the vigor of their minds, shower down on them, and the millions they here represent, such temporal Blessings as Thou seest expedient for them in this world, and crown them with everlasting Glory in the world to come. All this we ask in the name and through the merits of Jesus Christ, Thy Son and our Saviour, Amen.~ Justice Anthony Kennedy The wave of the future is not the conquest of the world by a single dogmatic creed but the liberation of the diverse energies of free nations and free men.~ John F. Kennedy I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute -- where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishoners for whom to vote -- where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference -- and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.~ John F. Kennedy ...[A] prohibition on moral judgments against various sexual behaviors is a violation of the freedom, even of the religious liberty, of those who view such behavior as wrong. If we don't have a right to act according to our religious belief by forming judgments according to those beliefs about human conduct and behavior, then, exactly what does the free exercise of religion mean? Can the free exercise of religion really mean simply that I have the right to believe that God has ordained certain things to be right or wrong but that I can't act accordingly? Surely free exercise means the freedom to act according to belief. And, yet, if we are not allowed to act according to belief when it comes to fundamental moral precepts, then what will be the moral implications of religion? None at all. But if we accept an understanding of religious liberty that doesn't permit us to discriminate the wheat from the chaff in our own actions and those of others, haven't we in fact permitted the government to dictate to us a uniform approach to religion? And, isn't that dictation of uniformity in religion exactly what the First Amendment intended to forbid?~ Alan Keyes Indeed the Idols I have loved so long, have done my credit in this World much wrong; have drowned my Glory in a shallow Cup, and sold my Reputation for a Song.~ Omar Khayyam We must learn to distinguish morality from moralizing.~ Henry Kissinger Each person will have a registered number, without which he will not be allowed to buy or sell; and there will be one universal world church. Anyone who refuses to take part in this universal system will have no right to exist.~ Dr. Kurt E. Koch The World is divided into armed camps ready to commit genocide just because we can't agree on whose fairy tales to believe. In the end, Religion will kill us all.~ Ed Krebs Free inquiry entails recognition of civil liberties as integral to its pursuit, that is, a free press, freedom of communication, the right to organize opposition parties and to join voluntary associations, and freedom to cultivate and publish the fruits of scientific, philosophical, artistic, literary, moral and religious freedom.~ Paul Kurtz Awareness of death is the very bedrock of the entire path. Until you have developed this awareness, all other practices are obstructed.~ Dalai Lama I am determined my children shall be brought up in their father's religion, if they can find out what it is.~ Charles Lamb The snow goose need not bathe to make itself white. Neither need you do anything but be yourself.~ Lao-Tzu No citizen enjoys genuine freedom of religious conviction until the state is indifferent to every form of religious outlook from Atheism to Zoroastrianism.~ Harold J. Laski Dogma is a defensive reaction against doubt in the mind of the theorist, but doubt of which he is unaware.~ Harold D. Lasswell Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print