Harry A. Blackmun Quotes

Neither the wording of the amendment itself nor common practice challenged the widely held belief that government guaranteed freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.

Certainly, no power to prescribe any religious exercise, or to assume authority in religious discipline, has been delegated to the General Government.

The lessons of the First Amendment are as urgent in the modern world as the 18th Century when it was written. One timeless lesson is that if citizens are subjected to state-sponsored religious exercises, the State disavows its own duty to guard and respect that sphere of inviolable conscience and belief which is the mark of a free people.

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

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.

I consider the government of the United States as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises. This results not only from the provision that no law shall be made respecting the establishment or free exercise of religion, but from that also which reserves to the States the powers not delegated to the United States. Certainly, no power to prescribe any religious exercise or to assume authority in any religious discipline has been delegated to the General Government. It must then rest with the States.

With respect to public acknowledgment of religious belief, it is entirely clear from our nation's historical practices that the Establishment Clause permits this disregard of polytheists and believers in unconcerned deities, just as it permits the disregard of devout atheists.

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.

I disagree strongly with the concept of separation of church and state. It was not written into the Constitution.

There are thousands of Ten Commandments plaques or monuments all over the country, and lawsuits to remove them have popped up in more than a dozen states.

I agree with the idea that there is a separation of church and state. That teachers should not be leading prayer - a particular kind of prayer in classrooms.

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

The tenet of the separation of church and state is an unconstitutional doctrine.

Religious freedom is already protected in the United States. It's in our Constitution. It's in most state constitutions.

The irony of the Supreme Court hearing on these cases last week and of the outright hostility that the Court has displayed against religion in recent years is that above the head of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is a concrete display of the Ten Commandments.

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 separation of church and state was meant to protect church from state; a state that declares religion off limits in public life is a state that declares itself supreme over all religious values.

The 1st Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach.

The government ought to stay out of the prayer business.

[T]he sole function of the American state, in respect to religion, is to recognize its existence and protect its liberty.

I believe in a wall between church and state so high that no one can climb over it.

Thomas Jefferson rode his horse around the 13 Colonies to try to keep us from having a national religion. Mixing religion and politics doesn’t work.

The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries.