Jack Kemp Quotes

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

Any attempt to single out Islam would be a violation of the Constitution.

When our Founding Fathers passed the First Amendment, they sought to protect churches from government interference. They never intended to construct a wall of hostility between government and the concept of religious belief itself.

The civil rights of none, shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretext infringed.

From a constitutional standpoint, the religion of a candidate is supposed to make no difference. Even before the founding fathers dreamed up the First Amendment, they inserted a provision in the Constitution expressly prohibiting any religious test for office.

The framers of our Constitution meant we were to have freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.

There's no religious test under the constitution. That's what it says. Period.

Private religious speech can't be discriminated against. It has to be treated equally with secular speech.

The courts are using the First Amendment to attack religion, when they should be using it to protect religion.

The phrase 'religious liberty' has become an overused talisman. Most of the invocations lately have nothing to do with actual infringements of free exercise [of religion]. They're about political and cultural dissent from gay rights.

The “establishment of religion” clause of the 1st Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or non-attendance. No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion. Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups and vice versa.

Every American has the constitutional right not to be taxed or have his tax money expended for the establishment of a religion.

The 1st Amendment was established to ensure, in addition to free exercise, that the state did not have the power to establish any particular religious teaching.

The First Amendment forbids the setting up of recognition of a state church of special favors and advantages which are denied to others

The First Amendment does not select any one group or any one type of religion for preferred treatment.

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

The history of our nation is intertwined with a certain religious tradition, and that the First Amendment was not intended to result in the complete exclusion of religious beliefs from our public classrooms.

On the issues of religious liberty, the Supreme Court continues to scrape against the bedrock of the American spirit.

I would not look with favor upon a President working to subvert the First Amendment's guarantees of religious liberty ... Neither do I look with favor upon those who would work to subvert Article VI of the Constitution by requiring a religious test - even by indirection.

I am committed to the First Amendment principles of religious freedom, tolerance, and diversity. Whether Mormon, Methodist, Jewish, or Muslim, Americans should be able to participate in their constitutional free exercise of religion. I do not think witchcraft is a religion, and I do not think it is in any way appropriate for the U.S. military to promote it.

To the ACLU, the First Amendment speaks more directly to freedom from religion than it does to freedom of religion.

In 1962, the Supreme Court banned organized prayer from public schools. Since then, federal, state, and local courts and officials, including public school administrators, have joined in a nationwide search and destroy mission for student religious practices.

Since the writing of our Constitution, our religious liberties have been systematically threatened and whittled away by Supreme Court justices who interpret the First Amendment as a prohibition against religious activity on public property.

The First Amendment freedom of religion is as important today as when the Bill of Rights was first written.

The point is that knowledge of God is not prohibited under the First Amendment.