Free Exercise Clause Quotes

The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries.

The separation of church and state was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country.

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

There is not a shadow of right in the general government to intermeddle with religion

The separation of church and state was meant to protect church from state; a state that declares religion off limits in public life is a state that declares itself supreme over all religious values.

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

Religious freedom is already protected in the United States. It's in our Constitution. It's in most state constitutions.

The applicability of the Establishment Clause to public funding of benefits to religious schools was settled in Everson v. Board of Ed. of Ewing, which inaugurated the modern era of establishment doctrine.

While we have a Constitution that is very strong in the sense that we are not gonna have a religion that's sanctioned by the government, it doesn't mean that we need to have a separation between government and religion.

Separation of Church and state was a radical idea when the U.S. was first founded, but it's become The Way Things Are.

The tenet of the separation of church and state is an unconstitutional doctrine.

The government ought to stay out of the prayer business.

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

When Pat Robertson says there is no constitutional doctrine of separation of church and state, I say he is wrong.

Private religious speech can't be discriminated against. It has to be treated equally with secular speech.

I believe in a wall between church and state so high that no one can climb over it.

I disagree strongly with the concept of separation of church and state. It was not written into the Constitution.

The United States may be a religious nation. But it is also a nation with a strong commitment to separation of church and state.

I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their Legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.

The 1st Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach.

The founding fathers of the U.S. were right when they erected that wall between church and state.

The Court's majority holds that the Establishment Clause is no bar to Ohio's payment of tuition at private religious elementary and middle schools under a scheme that systematically provides tax money to support the schools' religious missions.

It doesn't say anywhere in the Constitution this idea of the separation of church and state.

The Constitution has never treated religion as merely another private opinion that government can order people to keep to themselves.

Today, the religion clauses of the 1st Amendment do not need to be fixed; they need to be followed.