Felix Frankfurter Quotes

Declare church and state forever separate and distinct; but each free within their proper spheres.

The union of Church and State is not to make the Church political, but the State religious.

There should be absolutely no 'Separation of Church and State' in America.

He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors.

You're telling me that the separation of church and state is found in the First Amendment?

The First Amendment, however, does not say that in every and all respects there shall be a separation of Church and State. Rathe, it studiously defines the manner, the specific ways, in which there shall be no concert or union or dependency one on the other. That is the common sense of the matter. Otherwise the state and religion would be aliens to each other.

There could be no issue between the Church and the State. The Church, as such, has nothing to do with political affairs. On the other hand, the State has nothing to do with the faith or inner organization of the Church

The disconnection of Church and State was a master stroke for freedom and harmony.

I am not a spokesperson for the church and the church is not a spokesperson for the United States of America.

Thomas Jefferson declared, stating that he was speaking on behalf of the other founding fathers, ...(that) we should build a wall between the church and state.

Separation of Church and State is the perineum of America and the episiotomy didn't hold.

The [president] has no particle of spiritual jurisdiction. . . .

Every new and successful example of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters is of importance.

Good fences make good neighbors.

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

Our Executive never interferes in the discipline, doctrine, or regulations of any religious society. They were not consulted nor took part in the appointment of our Bishops, or the Church of England, or Methodists.

God's institutions (such as the government of church and of commonwealth be) may be close and compact, and co-ordinate one to another, and yet not confounded.

Why should the president direct the people to do what, perhaps, they have no mind to do? They may not be inclined to return thanks for a constitution until they have experienced that it promotes their safety and happiness. We do not yet know but they may have reason to be dissatisfied with the effects it has already produced; but whether this be so or not, it is a business with which Congress have nothing to do, it is a religious matter, and, as such is proscribed to us

The settled opinion here is, that religion is essentially distinct from civil Government, and exempt from its cognizance; that a connection between them is injurious to both.

The experience of the United States is a happy disproof of the error so long rooted in the unenlightened minds of well-meaning Christians, as well as in the corrupt hearts of persecuting usurpers, that without a legal incorporation of religious and civil polity, neither could be supported. A mutual independence is found most friendly to practical Religion, to social harmony, and to political prosperity

I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity the less they are mixed together

Strongly guarded as is the separation between religion and & Gov't in the Constitution of the United States the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies, may be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short history

The civil Government, though bereft of everything like an associated hierarchy, possesses the requisite stability, and performs its functions with complete success, whilst the number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people, have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the State

Neighbors are frightening enough when they're alive.

Let us not forget: The Palestinians in Gaza are our permanent neighbors, and we are theirs.