Woodrow Wilson Quotes

America's commitment to religious freedom and tolerance should not be conditional.

God did not burden the United States with a diversity of backgrounds, ideas and religions, He blessed America with them.

Permit liberty of conscience in matters of religion to all persons.

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.

It is not easy to conceive of anything that would be more unfortunate in a community based upon the ideals of which Americans boast than any considerable development of intolerance as regards religion.

If America has a civic religion, the First Amendment is its central article of faith.

America didn't create religious liberty. Religious liberty created America.

You're entitled in this country to worship as you please or to not worship. It's one of the great things that defines us as a nation, and it's at the heart of what it is to be in America.

If you're a Christian, Jew or Muslim, you're equally an American. That's the great thing about America, is the right to worship the way you see fit.

We Americans can be rightly proud of the fact that the right to the free and unfettered exercise of religion is a primary principle in the vision and founding of our country. It defines us as a people, and has uniquely contributed to making this nation great.

Whatever their defects, Christian fundamentalists have lived peacefully among us in America for several hundred years.

Democracy means that people can say what they want to. All the people. It means that they can vote as they wish. All the people. It means that they can worship God in any way they feel right, and that includes Christians and Jews and voodoo doctors as well.

Growing up in Britain as a rather loose Jew, the two things that didn't belong together were freedom and religious intensity. In America, they do. The Founding Fathers made a bet that if you didn't force everyone to profess religion in their own particular way, you could protect intellectual freedom, and religion would flourish.

We are a people of many different religions and many different faiths. The only way forward in a pluralistic society of diverse faiths such as ours is to have laws that protect and respect the freedom of all, equally.

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 a Catholic, how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners how to vote.... I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant or Jewish ... for while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew—or a Quaker—or a Unitarian—or a Baptist.

No religion deserves a privileged place in American life—not even my own.

That every man’s speak freely without fear, maintain the principles that he believes, worship according to his own faith, either one God, three Gods, no God, or 20 Gods; and let government protect him in doing so.

Muslims should be told quite clearly that our citizens have the legal right to criticize, lampoon, ridicule and mock Mohammed to their heart's content, in any way that they wish: that Islam and Muslims have no special claim to protection from the rough and tumble of post-Enlightenment intellectual, political and social life. If they cannot live in a society in which this is the case, they should go somewhere else..

The freedom allowed in the United States to all sorts of inquiry and discussion necessarily leads to a diversity of opinion, which is seen not only in their being different denominations, but different opinions also in the same denomination.

The new United States took the lead among the nations of the earth in the establishment of religious freedom. That is one reason America has never had any religious wars or any religious persecutions.

I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance, or admit a right in inquiry into the religious opinions of others.

It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty Gods, or no God.

A robust democratic society depends on its ability to uphold and protect religious freedom -- a basic right inherent in the very dignity of the human person. It is therefore essential to safeguard citizens who belong to religious minorities from acts of violence. Such protection not only accords with human dignity but also contributes to the common good.

And in order to leave no occasion for troubles or differences between our subjects, we have permitted, and herewith permit, those of the said religion pretended Reformed to live and abide in all the cities and places of this our kingdom and countries of our sway, without being annoyed, molested, or compelled to do anything in the matter of religion contrary to their consciences

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