Simon Sebag Montefiore Quotes

What does religious freedom look like? As America gets more religiously diverse, the concept is getting harder to define …. You can get 10 different groups in the room and they will disagree about what religious liberty is.

Religious liberty should be a bipartisan issue.

We can't equate democracy with Christianity because the largest democracy on earth is India, which is primarily Hindu. The third largest democracy is Indonesia, which is Islamic. Democracy and freedom are not dependent on Christian beliefs.

No religious consensus is possible in the United States, and to impose one would be both unconstitutional and unjust.

Knowledge about religions is not only characteristic of an educated person, but is also absolutely necessary for understanding and living in a world of diversity.

What other nations call religious toleration, we call religious rights.

Zambia will remain a Christian nation but that does not mean that other people should not pursue other religions.

every human being is free to embrace and profess that religion which, led by the light of reason he/she believes to be true…. in our time it is no longer convenient to have the Catholic religion as the only religion to the exclusion of any other religion.

A secular state can offer security to Muslims since it is compatible with acknowledging that religion is important and, that in a religiously plural environment the state does not allow believers in one religious tradition to enjoy a privileged status. All are citizens with equal rights.

The purpose of the law is to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahomedan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination.

Religious freedom in the American sense, incorporating the separation of church and state, has been the pivotal concept of the national development of the United States of America.

Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.

Nothing is more important to me, and nothing was more important to our founding fathers, than freedom of religion.

I don't think a Jewish or Christian or Islamic state is a proper concept. I would object to the United States as a Christian state.

In Arkansas, we believe in religious freedom.

Freedom of religion does not entitle your religion to have a privileged position within the public sphere.

How can you have the religion of the sovereign be the religion of the state if the sovereign belongs to many religions? And it's at that point, I think, historically, that you start to see people saying maybe the state should not associate itself with any religion. Maybe there shouldn't be any official religion.

I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries.

I want the French people to respect values that allow each individual to practice his or her faith, but in the frame of our common rules of secularism.

We from every religion feel comfortable in Britain because there is a host. The Church of England is a good host, it has been a major force in shaping England into such a tolerant society.

I believe in a president whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.

Protection of religious freedom means considering the faiths and beliefs of everyone involved.

I have no religious belief myself, but I don't think we should fight about it. In particular, I think that we should not rubbish moderate religious leaders like the Archbishop of Canterbury because I think we all agree that extreme fundamentalism is a threat, and we need all the allies we can muster against it.

I hope we will not so characterize religious people as being so narrow and so biased towards people not of their own religion that they cannot even work with them in this common cause to which you say they are committed.

Americans should be free to recognize our religious heritage; doing that is not the same as creating a government-sponsored religion.