Alphonse de Lamartine Quotes

The luckiest thing that ever happened to me was that my father didn't believe in God, and so he had no hang-ups about souls.

Freedom is a need of the soul, and nothing else. It is in striving toward God that the soul strives continually after a condition of freedom. God alone is the inciter and guarantor of freedom. He is the only guarantor. External freedom is only an aspect of interior freedom. Political freedom, as the Western world has known it, is only a political reading of the Bible. Religion and freedom are indivisible. Without freedom the soul dies. Without the soul there is no justification for freedom. Necessity is the only ultimate justification known to the mind.

Except when physically restrained, a person is least free or dignified when he is under threat of punishment, and unfortunately most people often are.

We live in a world where people say that you can believe anything you want about God.

We can still hear the voices that echo through history. Their message is as true today as ever. The people of Poland, the people of America, and the people of Europe still cry out "We want God."

Christianity is the enemy of liberty and civilization. It has kept mankind in slavery and oppression. The Church and the State have always fraternally united to exploit the people.

Human nature is full of riddles; . . . one of those riddles is: how is it that people who have been crushed by the sheer weight of slavery and cast to the bottom of the pit can nevertheless find strength in themselves to rise up and free themselves first in spirit and then in body while those who soar unhampered over the peaks of freedom suddenly lose the taste of freedom, lose the will to defend it, and, hopelessly confused and lost, almost begin to crave slavery?'

This nation under God

Once you cease to be a master, once you throw off your master's yoke, you are no longer human rubbish, you are a human being, and all the things that adds up to. So, too, with the slaves. Once they are no longer slaves, once they are free, they are no longer noble and exalted; they are just human beings.

My fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe; who presides in the councils of nations; and whose providential aid can supply every human defect; that his benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the People of the United States, a Government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes, and may enable every instrument employed in its administration to execute with success the functions allotted to his charge. In tendering this homage to the Great Author of every public and private good.

Most people don't base their morality on religion in spite what they say. If you ask people, "If you didn't believe in God, would you go out and kill your neighbour?" Most people will say, "No".

Human rights and individual liberties, including religious freedom, will be at the heart of the new Iraq.

We are a people united by our love for freedom, even when we differ in our personal beliefs. In America, we are free to profess any faith we choose, or no faith at all.

People are not usually deprived of their liberties all at once, but gradually, by one encroachment after another, as it is found they are disposed to bear them.

Theism tells men that they are the slaves of a God. Atheism assures men that they are the investigators and users of nature.

We have the freedom to pray and the freedom to love the God of our heart. And we have been forgiven by the only one who could condemn us. We are truly free.

He never believed in fate or providence, or the future being made by someone in the sky. Instead, at every instant, a trillion trillion possible futures; the pickiness of pure chance and physical laws seemed like freedom from the scheming of a gloomy god.

This is one of the great social functions of science - to free people from superstition

I wouldn't call myself an atheist. I neither deny nor accept that there is a God... So I do not laugh at people who believe in God. But I do not necessarily believe in God - nor deny that there could be one.

Why am I an atheist? I ask you: Why is anybody not an atheist? Everyone starts out being an atheist. No one is born with belief in anything. Infants are atheists until they are indoctrinated. I resent anyone pushing their religion on me. I don't push my atheism on anybody else. Live and let live. Not many people practice that when it comes to religion.

One may take many liberties with God which one cannot take with men.

I also believe this blessed land was set apart in a very special way, a country created by men and women who came here not in search of gold, but in search of God. They would be free people, living under the law with faith in their Maker and their future. Sometimes, it seems we've strayed from that noble beginning, from our conviction that standards of right and wrong do exist and must be lived up to.

If the thought ever comes to you that everything that you have thought about God is mistaken and that there is no God, do not be dismayed. It happens to many people. But do not think that the source of your unbelief is that there is no God.

Political rights do not exist because they have been legally set down on a piece of paper, but only when they have become the ingrown habit of a people, and when any attempt to impair them will meet with the violent resistance of the populace... One compels respect from others when he knows how to defend his dignity as a human being... The people owe all the political rights and privileges which we enjoy today in greater or lesser measure, not to the good will of their governments, but to their own strength.

Civilized people - Muslims, Christians and Jews - all understand that the source of freedom and human dignity is the Creator.