Robert G. Ingersoll Quotes

No form of theocracy, whether it's manifested in a violent or non-violent form, is ever good for civilisation, and we have to challenge it in civil society as well as we would challenge Christian-based theocracy, or any other form of bigotry.

My concern is to keep religion and the state separated. I don't think that religion and politics go together. When you see political decisions colored by religion, decisions that affect us all... I thought: 'I do not want to go back to medieval times.'

I’m very worried about the religious right. I don’t believe in mixing religion and politics. They do a disservice to religion and to politics.

God doesn't belong in politics.

Today the separation of church and state is America is used to silence the church... The way the concept is used today is totally reversed from the original intent... It is used today as a false political dictum in order to restrict the influence of Christian ideas... To have suggested the state separated from religion and religious influence would have amazed the Founding Fathers.

Religion should not be allowed to come into Politics....Religion is merely a matter between man and God.

The problem is efforts by liberals to establish a wall between religion and society, in the guise of maintaining the wall between church and state.

The American people need no course in philosophy or political science of church history to know that God should not be made into a celestial party chairman.

Religion and Government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.

Like its Islamic fundamentalist cousins, the religious right is waging a jihad against the civic state.

Western governments have completely separated Islam from politics. They have cut off its head and given the rest to us.

Eventually an effective political ideology cannot be based on any certain religion. Religion can offer some contribution, but an entire political activism cannot be oriented in accordance with religion. Political history of this region has the example of religion-based politics attempted in Pakistan and it failed. Not only in Islam, people in other religions of many regions try to keep on politics based on religion. It's not right.

In Islam, there is no difference between the state and the religion. The religion is the state, the state is the religion

Politics bereft of religion is absolute dirt, ever to be shunned.

Religion, too, is a weapon. What manner of weapon is religion when it becomes the government?

This is a lttle prayer dedicated to the separation of church and state. I guess if they are going to force those kids to pray in schools they might as well have a nice prayer like this: Our Father who art in heaven, and to the republic for which it stands, thy kingdom come, one nation indivisible as in heaven, give us this day as we forgive those who so proudly we hail. Crown thy good into temptation but deliver us from the twilight's last gleaming. Amen and Awomen.

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials; and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.

The secular state is the guarantee of religious pluralism. This apparent paradox, again, is the simplest and most elegant of political truths.

I believe in the American tradition of separation of church and state which is expressed in the First Amendment to the Constitution. By my office - and by personal conviction - I am sworn to uphold that tradition.

History makes the point time and time again No greater mischief can be created than to merge the power of religion with the power of government.

Religion mustn't interfere with the state - so one of the basic Democratic principles as we know it in America is the separation of church and state.

Freedom is won by relegating religion to a purely private sphere remote from the body politic. In fact, the establishment of a free society is predicated on the idea that religion must be surgically removed from culture.

If we only had some God in the country's laws, instead of being in such a sweat to get him into the Constitution, it would be better all around.

If you're a Christian and you're running for president and you want to make this into a theocracy, I'm not going to support you.

The time has come to knock off this religion business in American politics. There's no end to the mischief that can occur. It is like putting nitroglycerine in a Waring blender.