Red Skelton Quotes

It appears that the Soviets are now going to allow prayer in school. One wonders how soon the United States will catch up.

I'm for prayer in schools.

I'll tell you right now. I'm for prayer in school.

We should not permit prayer to be taken out of the schools; that's the only way most of us got through.

A school prayer amendment would confer upon public school boards a power the 1st Amendment now denies to Congress and the states, that is, the power to establish religion.

Instead of school busing and prayer in schools, which are both controversial, why not a joint solution? Prayer in buses. Just drive these kids around all day and let them pray their fuckn' empty little heads off.

From America's schools, religion has been relentlessly purged. No prayers, no Bibles, no Christian symbols, no Ten Commandments.

If prayer is to leave the public schools, let the ridicule of prayer leave also.

People for the American Way says it has yet to find anyone who has made a stronger case against the proposed school prayer Constitutional amendment... What kind of prayer would we use?

In 1962, the Supreme Court banned organized prayer from public schools. Since then, federal, state, and local courts and officials, including public school administrators, have joined in a nationwide search and destroy mission for student religious practices.

The First Amendment of the Constitution was not written to protect the people from religion; that amendment was written to protect religion from government tyranny. . . But now we're told our children have no right to pray in school. Nonsense. The pendulum has swung too far toward intolerance against genuine religious freedom. It is time to redress the balance.

With that in mind and in celebration of National Prayer Day, today I have proposed in the House of Representatives a Constitutional Amendment that would restore voluntary prayer in our Nation's schools.

To imply that religious believers have no right to engage moral questions in the public square or at the ballot is simply to establish a Reichian secularism as our state faith.

We shall say clearly that any symbol conspicuously displaying religious affiliation in school is prohibited.

I don't have freedom in the United States to go into a public school and preach the Gospel, nor is a student free in a public school to pray, or a teacher free to read the Bible publicly to the students. At the same time, we have a great degree of freedom for which I am grateful.

If a minister can lead the Senate in prayer every day... what is so wrong with beginning every day of school with an ecumenical prayer?

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

At the last meeting of the Board of Education, Mr. Maegher called attention to the chanting of the Lord's Prayer in the public schools, which is a violation of a rule which forbids the introduction of religious matters. We are glad this subject has come up at last. The Lord's Prayer has been brought into disrespect about long enough by being snarled through the dirty noses of a hundred bad boys and preposterous girls.

It is neither sacrilegious or antireligious to say that each separate government should stay out of the business of writing or sanctioning official prayers and leave that purely religious function to the people themselves and to those the people choose to look to for religious guidance.

It is no part of the of the business of government to compose official prayers.

The government ought to stay out of the prayer business.

Religious freedom must include the right to influence public policy within the bounds of liberal norms.

I'm all for teaching creation and allowing prayers in schools, as soon as scholars begin teaching Darwinism and geometry in church.

This is a lttle prayer dedicated to the separation of church and state. I guess if they are going to force those kids to pray in schools they might as well have a nice prayer like this: Our Father who art in heaven, and to the republic for which it stands, thy kingdom come, one nation indivisible as in heaven, give us this day as we forgive those who so proudly we hail. Crown thy good into temptation but deliver us from the twilight's last gleaming. Amen and Awomen.

I know that some believe that voluntary prayer in schools should be restricted to a moment of silence. We already have the right to remain silent - we can take our Fifth Amendment.