Secular Values Quotes

I'd like everybody to be secular. I suppose I have to say politically I would like religion to become gentler and nicer and to stop interfering with other people's lives, stop repressing women, stop indoctrinating children, all that sort of thing. But I really, really would like to see religion go away altogether.

In the public realm, secularism should not concede a single inch to religious intrusions. To argue otherwise is to violate the meaning of secularism.

I was brought up in a Jewish home, but I was brought up to be human - not fanatical, which is something that I don't appreciate at all. I learned to become a humanist and not to dwell on the differences between Jews and Christians.

Secular societies establish tolerance by being equally non-accommodating toward all religious demands within the public sphere.

I want the French people to respect values that allow each individual to practice his or her faith, but in the frame of our common rules of secularism.

I'm trying to champion the naturalist's worldview and show it's not as heathen as most religious people would make it out to be.

Secularism does not accept many things as absolutes. Its principal objectives are pleasure and self-interest. Often, those who embrace secularism have a different look about them.

We in the United States are pluralistic respecting ultimate beliefs. Profound values exist apart from a devotion to a god.

I believe in evolution, scientific inquiry, and global warming; I believe in free speech, whether politically correct or politically incorrect, and I am suspicious of using government to impose anybody's religious beliefs -including my own- on nonbelievers.

Without a policy restricting immigration, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to fight against communalism and the rise of ways of life at odds with laicite - France's distinctive form of secularism - and other laws and values of the French Republic.

All modern secularity requires is that our public norms and the arguments for them not presuppose common acceptance of Jewish or Christian revelation, even if these public norms are consistent with a particular community's revelation and the authoritative teachings it derives from that revelation.

So here we have found a means of a) alienating even the most flexible and patient Palestinians; while b) frustrating the efforts of the more principled and compromising Israelis; while c) empowering and financing some of the creepiest forces in American and Israeli society; and d) heaping ordure on our own secular founding documents. When will the Justice Department and the Congress and the Supreme Court become aware of this huge and rank offense, which is designed to bring us ever nearer to holy war?

It's all about secular unionism, the advancement of atheism, which they even tried to create in this law - Democrats did - an atheistic chaplaincy.

My family and I were welcomed to Canada more than 40 years ago. We sought and obtained refuge in a liberal, modern, and secular society, and put the ugliness of genocidal religious hate and associated tribalism behind us - or so we thought.

The life of West, Nietzsche said, is based on Christianity. The values of the West are based on Christianity. Some of these values seem to have taken a life of their own, and this gives us the illusion that we can get rid of Christianity and keep the values. This, Nietzsche says, is an illusion...Remove the Christian foundation, and the values must go too.

As Indians, we take great pride in the fact that we are a progressive nation. We are proud of our democracy, our secular values as well as our entrepreneurial spirit. We are appalled by the harsh laws that govern women's lives in Taliban-dominated lands. Yet we turn a blind eye to the injustices that our own society continues to heap upon women.

I am honorary President of the American Humanist Society, having succeeded the late, great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov in that utterly functionless capacity. We Humanists behave as well as we can, without any rewards or punishments in an Afterlife.

An Atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An atheist believes that deed must be done instead of prayer said. An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanished, war eliminated.

You should support Israel not because it is Jewish but because it is a sane, secular democracy. You want Lebanon to be at peace. You don't care much about Kuwait.

Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.

India was secular even when Muslims hadn't come here and Christians hadn't set foot on this soil. It is not as if India became secular after they came. They came with their own modes of worship, and they, too, were given a place of honor and respect. They had the freedom to worship God as per their wish and inclination.

Flawed as they may be, science and the secular Enlightenment values expressed in Western democracies are our best hope for survival.

I wasn't raised with a specific religion. I wasn't raised to judge people in any way.

There is tension between the values of modern society and the principles of Islam.

You give up a lot being an atheist.