Religion and State Quotes

We want the church and state to be separated. Only then will religion be able to fulfill its purpose — to comfort the misery, to console the grieved.

Christianity and democracy are inevitably enemies.

Nepal will be a secular state - there is no other way.

Religion organized in the Church has in times past pursued two lines of action—First, it has secluded itself from the world, gone out of the world, that is, of the State; and, secondly, it has striven to reenter the world as a conqueror, to dominate the world

Western governments have completely separated Islam from politics. They have cut off its head and given the rest to us.

I believe that religion should be totally separated from the state. That's not the way it is today, not even in Sweden.

Secularism and the separation of religion from the state are the basic pre-conditions for women’s liberation in the Middle East

Is religion a private affair? Would you like to see Islam, as a moral and political ideal, meeting the same fate in the world of Islam as Christianity has already met in Europe? Is it possible to retie in Islam as an ethical ideal and to reject it as a polity in favor of national politics, in which religious attitude is not permitted to play any part? …. The proposition that religion is a private individual experience is not surprising on the lips of a European. In Europe the conception of Christianity as a monastic order, renouncing the world of matter and fixing its gaze entirely on the world or spirit. led by a logical process of thought, to the view embodied in this proposition…. The religious ideal of Islam, therefore, is organically related to the social order, which it has created. The rejection of the one will eventually involve the rejection of the other. Therefore, the construction of a polity on national lines, if it means a displacement of the Islamic principle of solidarity is simply unthinkable to a Muslim.

The modern concept of separation is an argument for a total separation of religion from the state. The consequence of the acceptance of the doctrine leads to the removal of religion as an influence in civil government.

Our fathers founded the first secular government that was ever founded in this world. Recollect that. The first secular government - the first government that said every church has exactly the same rights and no more; every religion has the same rights, and no more.

Neither the wording of the amendment itself nor common practice challenged the widely held belief that government guaranteed freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.

Our National Church and general religious institutions cost us, upon accredited computation, about twenty million pounds annually. Worship thus being expensive, I appeal to your heads and your pockets whether we are not too poor to have a God. If poor men cost the State as much, they would be put like officers on half pay; and while our distress lasts, I think it would be wise to do the same thing with the deity.

For democrats, it's as crucial to defend secular culture as to preserve secular law. And in fact the two projects are inseparable: When religion defines morality, the wall between church and state comes to be seen as immoral.

Way down deep the American people are afraid of an entangling relationship between formal religions - or whole bodies of religious belief - and government.

I don’t believe in theocracy. Everywhere you have a state religion, it dies.

In Britain, we are not a secular state as France is, or some other countries.

Oh, there's going to be debate because you're dealing with the Bible and religion is supposed to be separate from state and that to me is already a conflict before it even hits the gay issue.

Many men without morals have attacked religion because it was contrary to their inclinations. Many wise men have despised it because it seemed to them ridiculous. Many persons have regarded it with indifference, because they have never felt its true disadvantages. But it is as a citizen that I attack it, because it seems to me harmful to the happiness of the state, hostile to the march of the mind of man, and contrary to sound morality, from which the interests of state policy can never be separated.

Some in the West suggest that Isam needs a separation of mosque and state. However, in the case of Iran at least what is needed is a separation lof religion and business.

I think, as a secular woman who heads a religious party and lives in Tel Aviv, we don't have so many problems on religion and state. Politicians, like Yair Lapid and Avigdor Liberman, are trying to create these problems for all different reasons and interests in order to get more votes.