Ruth Bader Ginsburg Quotes

I believe in the Constitution. The Constitution says that government isn't supposed to be infusing religion into our society, and so I asked to have that upheld.

The 1st Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach.

If a State refused to let religious groups use facilities open to others, then it would demonstrate not neutrality but hostility toward religion.

The Constitution does not require complete separation of church and state; it affirmatively mandates accommodation, not merely tolerance, of all religions, and forbids hostility toward any.

Our Constitution was not intended to be used by ... any group to foist its personal religious beliefs on the rest of us.

Our Constitution recognises no other power than that of persuasion, for enforcing religious observances.

The tenet of the separation of church and state is an unconstitutional doctrine.

Religious freedom is already protected in the United States. It's in our Constitution. It's in most state constitutions.

The irony of the Supreme Court hearing on these cases last week and of the outright hostility that the Court has displayed against religion in recent years is that above the head of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is a concrete display of the Ten Commandments.

While we have a Constitution that is very strong in the sense that we are not gonna have a religion that's sanctioned by the government, it doesn't mean that we need to have a separation between government and religion.

The framers of the constitution were very literate men and they could write very well. When they wrote that “Congress shall make NO LAW respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press,” they meant NO LAW. If they had wanted to have some laws or an emergency law, they would not have written, “NO LAW.” They were expert at the English language.

The Government of the United States possesses no power whatever over the question of religion.

The government ought to stay out of the prayer business.

The greatest achievement ever made in the cause of human progress is the total and final separation of church and state. If we had nothing else to boast of, we could lay claim with justice that first among the nations we of this country made it an article of organic law that the relations between man and his Maker were a private concern, into which other men have no right to intrude.

[The line] cannot be too strongly drawn between church and state.

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 in blood for centuries.

All such of the said statutes and acts aforesaid, or parts thereof, as may be construed to establish or maintain any particular denomination of Christians or their ministers, or concern the allegiance heretofore yielded to, and the supremacy, sovereignty, government, or prerogatives claimed or exercised by, the King of Great Britain and his predecessors, over the colony of New York and its inhabitants, or are repugnant to this constitution, be, and they hereby are, abrogated and rejected.

The First Amendment only says 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.' It can disrespect all it wants.

I think the most grievous threat that we have today is this imperialistic judiciary, this judicial monarchy that has it wrong on what the First Amendment's about and has an objective to create religious sterility in the public square, which is wholly inconsistent with the Founding Fathers' view.

The Constitution has never treated religion as merely another private opinion that government can order people to keep to themselves.

Although the ACLU would argue that it is unconstitutional for me, as a public official, to do this in a government building, let alone at a football game, I will end with my prayer for the next administration: Please God, no more Souters.

The days of discriminating against religious institutions simply because they are religious must come to an end.

We know that the Constitution wisely separates church from state, but remember: the Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.

The Free Exercise Clause at the very least was designed to guarantee freedom of conscience by prohibiting any degree of compulsion in matters of belief. It was offended by a burden on one's religion. The Establishment Clause can be understood as designed in part to ensure that the advancement of religion comes only from the voluntary efforts of its proponents and not from support by the state. Religious groups are to prosper or perish on the intrinsic merit and attraction of their beliefs and practices.

Is the appointment of Chaplains to the two Houses of Congress consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious freedom? In strictness the answer on both points must be in the negative. The Constitution of the U. S. forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion. The law appointing Chaplains establishes a religious worship for the national representatives, to be performed by Ministers of religion, elected by a majority of them, and these are to be paid out of the national taxes. Does this not involve the principle of a national establishment ... ?