Madalyn Murray O'Hair Quotes

I would like to call your attention to ... an evil that, if allowed to continue, will probably lead to great trouble ... It is the accumulation of vast amounts of untaxed church property.

Churches are tax exempt because they are supposed to provide a public good. To prove that good to the IRS, churches arent supposed to hoard their money. They are supposed to spend it on goods and services for the faithful. Under this pretense, the church has made massive investments in tax free real estate all over the world. And when it comes to labor costs, they are almost free.

The English Established Church... will more readily pardon an attack on 38 of its 39 articles than on 1/39 of its income.

But Christ could certainly not have established the Church. That is, the institution we now call by that name, for nothing resembling our present conception of the Church-with its sacraments, its hierarchy, and especially its claim to infallibility-is to be found in Christ's words or in the conception of the men of his time.

Then came the churches, then came the schools, then came the lawyers, then came the rules.

I'd make an educated guess that 20 to 25 percent of the taxable property in the U.S. is Church-owned.In a recent book, Church Wealth and Business Income, it was estimated that this property -all of it tax-exempt -is worth upwards of 80 billion dollars. I know that's a fantastic, unbelievable figure, but there's every reason to believe that it's on the conservative side; and this amount is increasing yearly at a geometric rate.

I don't know how you feel, but I'm pretty sick of church people. You know what they ought to do with churches? Tax them. If holy people are so interested in politics, government, and public policy, let them pay the price of admission like everybody else. The Catholic Church alone could wipe out the national debt if all you did was tax their real estate.

The churches rose to power on the income from tax-free property. What earthly -or heavenly- right have they got to enjoy a privilege denied to everyone else, even including nonprofit organizations? None! My contention is that with the churches exempted from property taxation, you and I have to pay that much more in taxes to make up for what they're not contributing.

The church alone beyond all question Has for ill-gotten goods the right digestion.

What changed their mind was Jimmy Carter's intervention against the Christian schools, trying to deny them tax-exempt status on the basis of so-called de facto segregation.

Examining the world in order to find consolation is very much like looking carefully over the pages of a great book in order to find our own name . ... Whether we find what we want or not, our preoccupation has hindered us from a true knowledge of the contents.

I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.

I talk to nurses and programmers, salespeople and firefighters - people who bust their tails every day. Not one of them - not one - stashes their money in the Cayman Islands to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.

We shouldn't be surprised that conditions in the universe are suitable for life, but this is not evidence that the universe was designed to allow for life. We could call order by the name of God, but it would be an impersonal God. There's not much personal about the laws of physics.

I'm tied of hearing about temperance instead of abstinence, in order to please the cocktail crowd in church congregations.

You must value the business in order to value the stock.

Whenever the average intellect of the clergy declines in the balance with the average intellect of the people the churches will be shut up and a new order of things [will] begin.

Churches are wonderful and beautiful, and they are vehicles for religion, but no Church can have more than a very little of the truth.

Christians, you and your churches don't get to be millionaires while other people have nothing at all. They're your bloody rules! Either stick to them or abandon the faith.

On the whole, I prefer not to be lectured on patriotism by those who keep offshore maildrops in order to avoid paying their taxes.

The truth that makes us free is always ticking away like a time-bomb in the basement of everybody's church.

The minister's brain is often the "poor-box" of the church.

The 1984 tax trials, when he appealed his New York state and New York City audits, were about Donald Trump claiming zero revenue for his consulting business and taking over $600,000 of deductions, for which he couldn't produce any documentation, no receipts, no checks, nothing, those two elements, zero income and huge deductions, combined with his own tax guy testifying under oath, that's my signature, but I didn't prepare that tax return, those are very strong badges of fraud.

At G-20 summit, I worked with US and other countries to bring black money back.

Why is the church always a taillight rather than a headlight?