Ferenc David Quotes

Religion has the right to express its opinion in the service of the people, but God in creation has set us free: it is not possible to interfere spiritually in the life of a person.

Why should any man have power over any other man's faith, seeing Christ Himself is the author of it?

Let it be henceforth proclaimed to the world that man's conscience was created free; that he is no longer accountable to his fellow man for his religious opinions, being responsible therefore only to his God.

No religion can be built on force.

Faith comes not by compulsion, but it is a matter of free choice; therefore, no one has the authority to compel anyone else in such matters, nor to coerce him with new laws

True believers must embrace their faith of their own free will - not because it was imposed, or inherited, or part of the dominant local culture. To become a believer under pressure or coercion isn't true belief.' This also means that the believer must ... remain free to leave his faith.

You cannot impose ideologies on people who do not embrace it wholeheartedly.

King Sisebut forced the Jews by power when he should have roused them by the doctrine of the faith.

The power that can invade the liberty of conscience can usurp civil liberty; and where there is a power that can usurp civil liberty, there is no commonwealth.

There is not a single instance in history in which civil liberty was lost and religious liberty preserved entire, If therefore we yield up our temporal property, we at the same time deliver the conscience into bondage.

Well aware that the opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds; that Almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested his supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion...

Freedom requires virtue. Virtue requires faith. And faith, in turn, requires freedom. You can't have coerced state-sanctioned religion. It has to be utterly free.

Force works on servile natures, not the free.

Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst.

A lasting order cannot be established by bayonets.

As liberty and intelligence have increased the people have more and more revolted against the theological dogmas that contradict common sense and wound the tenderest sensibilities of the soul.

Deny human rights, and however little you may wish to do so, you will find yourself abjectly kneeling at the feet of that old-world god, Force.

We must not enable anyone to impose his personal view regarding religion on others by force, oppression, or pressure.

I believe in a religion that believes in freedom. Any time I have to accept a religion that won't let me fight a battle for my people, I say to hell with that religion.

I beg you be persuaded that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution.

The use of force to liberate people is very different from the use of force to suppress or control them, or even to defeat them.

Reason has never failed men. Only force and repression have made the wrecks in the world.

History’s most important lesson is that it has not been possible to make coercion compatible with the truth.

Silence coerced by law—the argument of force in its worst form.

Men are free and claim the right to think for themselves in religious as well as political matters.