Mario Cuomo Quotes

There is little doubt that religious liberty is best exercised within the setting of the secular state.

I believe in a president whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.

Government needs to stay out of the religion business altogether.

Growing up in Britain as a rather loose Jew, the two things that didn't belong together were freedom and religious intensity. In America, they do. The Founding Fathers made a bet that if you didn't force everyone to profess religion in their own particular way, you could protect intellectual freedom, and religion would flourish.

No religious consensus is possible in the United States, and to impose one would be both unconstitutional and unjust.

My earnest regard to preserve inviolate forever, in our new empire, the great principle of religious freedom ... which is independent of any religious doctrine and not restrained by any.

Japanese subjects shall, within limits not prejudicial to peace and order, and not antagonistic to their duties as subjects, enjoy freedom of religious belief. [Article 28, 1889 Constitution] Freedom of religion is guaranteed to all. No religious organization shall receive any privileges from the State, nor exercise any political authority. 2) No person shall be compelled to take part in any religious acts, celebration, rite or practice. 3) The State and its organs shall refrain from religious education or any other religious activity. [Article 20, 1946 Constitution]

Freedom of religion does not entitle your religion to have a privileged position within the public sphere.

The restriction of religion to private life therefore does not necessarily threaten the vital interests of the majority religion, if there is one, and it protects minority religions from tyranny of the majority.

A just laicism allows religious freedom. The state does not impose religion but rather gives space to religions with a responsibility toward civil society, and therefore it allows these religions to be factors in building up society.

I believe in an America where the separation of Church and State is absolute—where no Catholic prelate would tell the President, should he be a Catholic, how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners how to vote.... I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant or Jewish ... for while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew—or a Quaker—or a Unitarian—or a Baptist.

I am for freedom of religion, & against all maneuvres to bring about the legal ascendency of one sect over another.

What other nations call religious toleration, we call religious rights.

To say that religion cannot stand without a state establishment is not only contrary to fact (as has been proved already) but is a contradiction in phrase.

We do not want an official state church. If ninety-nine percent of the population were Catholics, I would still be opposed to it. I do not want civil power combined with religious power.

T]he prevailing opinion in Europe, England not excepted, has been that religion could not be preserved without the support of government nor government be supported without an established religion that there must be at least an alliance of some sort between them. It remained for North America to bring the great and interesting subject to a fair, and finally a decisive test

Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than on opinions in physics or geometry.

With us, the State is undoubtedly on solid ground in refusing to decide what type of religion is best for society. Society is left free to work out the problem. And here is a curious and pertinent matter for remark: that the Stale is the only department of civilization which, by common consent, is denied this privilege.

Nothing is more important to me, and nothing was more important to our founding fathers, than freedom of religion.

Religion is extremely important in this democracy - so important that it occupies a prime position in the Bill of Rights.

Whatever America's founders believed about Christianity - and they believed a wide range of things - they clearly rejected the idea of an established church.

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

The Constitution provides for freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.

I'm just confused as to where we lost that in America because it is everyone's God-given right to think the way they think and that's fine. That's why our ancestors came here to America, to believe what they want, pray how they want and follow a religion with whoever they want.

By our form of government, the Christian religion is the established religion; and all sects and denominations of Christians are placed upon the same equal footing, and are equally entitled to protection in their religious liberty.