Charles Carroll Quotes

The great leaders of the American Revolution were determined to remove political support from every religious establishment.

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.

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

First and foremost is what this country was based on: one nation under God.

The First Amendment freedom of religion is as important today as when the Bill of Rights was first written.

Freedom of religion is a principle that is central to our Nation's Declaration of Independence. Congress has taken this positive step to protect our freedom to express allegiance to America's flag and the ideals it represents.

The United States of America was formed to honor the word of God.

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

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

Tens of thousands of brave Americans died to break the chains of British tyranny so that the principles of our Declaration of Independence could take fold and flourish in the birth of a new nation.

The Americans combine the notions of religion and liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive of one without the other.

The phrase 'religious liberty' has become an overused talisman. Most of the invocations lately have nothing to do with actual infringements of free exercise [of religion]. They're about political and cultural dissent from gay rights.

Religion and the public liberty of a people are interwoven, and cannot exist separately.

A free church in a free state.

Freedom of religion, as the Founding Fathers saw it, was not just the right to associate oneself with a certain denomination but the right to disassociate without penalty.

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

Prior to the Revolution, the Episcopal Church was established by law in this State. On the Declaration of independence it was left with all other sects, to a self-support. And no doubt exists that there is much more of religion among us now than there ever was before the change; and particularly in the Sect which enjoyed the legal patronage. This proves rather more than, that the law is not necessary to the support of religion.

Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Religion must be disciplined by democracy.

The passage of the 1st Amendment is the single most dramatic and significant turning point of a revolutionary transition to religious freedom.

the signing of the Declaration of Independence … This was the first public assertion of equality.

There are broad freedoms in Israel. In fact, Israel's Declaration of Independence grants all Israel's inhabitants equality of social and political rights irrespective of religion, race or gender.

If the true spark of religious and civil liberty be kindled, it will burn.

The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity

From Samuel Adams to Patrick Henry to Benjamin Franklin to Alexander Hamilton, all the Founders intended religion to provide a moral anchor for our liberty in democracy.