Religious Freedom Quotes

“Here is my Creed. I believe in one God, Creator of the Universe. That he governs the World by his Providence. That he ought to be worshiped. That the most acceptable Service we can render him, is doing good to his other Children. That the Soul of Man is immortal, and will be treated with Justice in another life, respect[ing] its Conduct in this. These I take to be fundamental Principles of all sound Religion, and I regard them as you do, in whatever Sect I meet them.”
― Benjamin Franklin, The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, Complete Set: Volumes 1-37

“Long before Emma Lazarus welcomed the tired and poor, Washington declared that the 'bosom of America [was] open to receive, the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations and Religions, whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges.”
― Steven Waldman, Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America

“Freedom of conscience means not only the freedom to believe but also the freedom to change - not only the right to practice one faith but also the right to a spiritual journey. The Founders didn't just champion religious freedom - they used it. Franklin, Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and Madison never stopped examining - passionately, combatively, wisely - life's deepest questions. Each journey was distinctive, but they ended up in similar places, still deeply spiritual but with an ever-shortening list of required religious creeds. The older they got, the simpler their faith became.”
― Steven Waldman, Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America

“All you want is power. Power and control. And we want freedom. On every front. It’s every man’s birthright, the freedom to make his own
choices before God. Freedom for you to accept God or reject Him. His truth, His forgiveness, His righteousness. Your choice, because He created you free. Just like every other person ever born.”
― Jayna Baas, Preacher on the Run

“Religion, just like a tribe is an expression of our beliefs. It's not a war scheme to negate, discriminate or judge each other.”
― Dr. Jacent Mpalyenkana, Ph.D. MBA

“The New World was settled [by Europeans] to promote Christianity. For more than 150 years, colonial governments actively supported the dominant faith. Less acknowledged today is a point well understood by the Founding Fathers: Nearly all of these experiments in state encouragement of religion failed.”
― Steven Waldman, Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America

“Jefferson believed that a secret to religious freedom was destroying the concept of heresy, the crime of expressing unauthorized religious thought. And he cared deeply - personally, passionately - about heresy because, in the context of his times, Thomas Jefferson as a heretic, and wanted to live in a nation that tolerated men like him.”
― Steven Waldman, Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America

“. 'In religion itself there is nothing mysterious to its author,' Madison wrote in 1792. 'The mystery lies in the dimness of the human sight.' If it is ultimately impossible for mortals to know God's mind, the history of persecution becomes cosmically tragic - two thousand years of dogmatic men burning one another over religious ideas whose veracity only God can know.”
― Steven Waldman, Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America

“I am the wind, when I flow among the Christians, I am Christian, when among the Muslims, I am Muslim, when among the Jews, I am Jew, when among the Hindus, I am Hindu, when among the Atheists, I am Atheist, but when among the fundamentalists, I am a purifying tornado.”
― Abhijit Naskar, All For Acceptance

“I therefore hold the legendary Jesus in no way responsible for the trouble: it began with Luther, perhaps, and went on with Wesley; but no matter! — what I am trying to get at is the religion which makes England to-day a hell for any man who cares at all for freedom. That religion they call Christianity; the devil they honour they call God. I accept these definitions, as a poet must do, if he is to be at all intelligible to his age, and it is their God and their religion that I hate and will destroy.”
― Aleister Crowley, The World's Tragedy

“Almighty God hath created the mind free. All attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens...are a departure from the plan of the holy Author of our religion...No man shall be compelled to frequent or support religious worship or ministry or shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but all men shall be free to profess and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion. I know but one code of morality for men whether acting singly or collectively.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“For although some praise his government because he allows everyone to believe what he will so long as he remains the temporal lord, yet this praise is not true, for he does not allow Christians to come together in public, and no one can openly confess Christ or preach or teach against Mohammed. What kind of freedom of belief is it when no one is allowed to preach or confess Christ, and yet our salvation depends on that confession as Paul says, “To confess with the lips saves,” and Christ has strictly commanded to confess and teach His Gospel.”
― Martin Luther, On War Against the Turk

“The root destruction of religion in the country ... could be realized only by mass arrests of Orthodox believers. Monks and nuns, whose black habits had been a distinctive feature of Old Russian life, were intensively rounded up on every hand placed under arrest, and sent into exile. They arrested and sentenced active laymen. The circles kept getting bigger, as they raked in ordinary believers as well, old people, and particularly women, who were the most stubborn believers of all ... True, they were supposedly being arrested and tried not for their actual faith but for openly declaring their convictions and for bringing up their children in the same spirit. As Tanya Khodkevich wrote: 'You can pray freely, but just so God alone can hear.' (The Gulag Archipelago)”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

“The root destruction of religion in the country ... could be realized only by mass arrests of Orthodox believers. Monks and nuns, whose black habits had been a distinctive feature of Old Russian life, were intensively rounded up on every hand, placed under arrest, and sent into exile. They arrested and sentenced active laymen. The circles kept getting bigger, as they raked in ordinary believers as well, old people, and particularly women, who were the most stubborn believers of all ... True, they were supposedly being arrested and tried not for their actual faith but for openly declaring their convictions and for bringing up their children in the same spirit. As Tanya Khodkevich wrote: 'You can pray freely, but just so God alone can hear.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

“Hurt no one's belief as long as they are not practicing and preaching hate.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Earthquakin' Egalitarian: I Die Everyday So Your Children Can Live

“And will you understand me when I say I would fight to keep you free from such beliefs because for you they would be false, and at the same time I would fight to keep my mother in those same beliefs because for her they are true and necessary? She would be lost without them, for by them she has lived and by them she must
die. But you and l—we must have our own beliefs
to live and die in”
― Pearl S. Buck, A House Divided

“Science proceeds through constant questioning and analyzing the predominant scientific laws and modifying them if necessary. If science, as the most advanced tool in the hands of rational humanity can have the guts to change itself based on the needs of the time and society, why can’t religion as the most influential tool in the hands of divine humanity, modify itself?”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Constitution of The United Peoples of Earth

“Saipov studied accounting in Uzbekistan. Then he got a U.S. green card and his life fell apart.”
― The Wall Street Journal

“When President Donald Trump signed the executive order on religious freedom on May 4, 2017, the Little Sisters could finally breathe a sigh or relief.”
― Horace Cooper, How Trump Is Making Black America Great Again: The Untold Story of Black Advancement in the Era of Trump

“The First Amendment states, 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' which I understand to mean that government cannot establish a national religion, but neither can it prevent citizens from displaying their religious beliefs in public spaces.”
― Claston Bernard, Outcast: No Room at the Table for Conservative Blacks in Black America

“Taking away our freedom to believe is tantamount to taking away our humanity.”
― Cometan

“Institutions in science exist primarily, not to confirm a pre-existing idea, but to disprove such idea - and if they fail to do so, despite repeated attempts, then said idea is accepted as a scientific fact, whereas in religion, institutions exist primarily to preserve and endorse pre-existing ideas, always discouraging scrutiny of any sort. Thus harmful and often inhuman flaws of our medieval past continue to dominate the domain of religion, while science continues to flourish by eliminating its flaws and unfolding new horizons of understanding.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Vatican Virus: The Forbidden Fiction

“If there is to be reform in religion, the practitioners of religion - priests, preachers, nuns, monks and every such individual, must come forward, before everyone else, and set an example as advocates of harmony and growth.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Vatican Virus: The Forbidden Fiction

“Amidst the sea of medieval bigots dominating the domain of religion, there are also priests and preachers who are bringing in a whiff of fresh air.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Vatican Virus: The Forbidden Fiction

“Faith must learn to evolve with time, or else it turns into poison!”
― Abhijit Naskar, Vatican Virus: The Forbidden Fiction

“You cannot reason with religious nuts on the evolution of religion.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Vatican Virus: The Forbidden Fiction

“Institutions in science exist primarily, not to confirm a pre-existing idea, but to disprove such idea - and if they fail to do so, despite repeated attempts, then said idea is accepted as a scientific fact, whereas in religion, institutions exist primarily to preserve and endorse preexisting ideas, always discouraging scrutiny of any sort. Thus harmful and often inhuman flaws of our medieval past continue to dominate the domain of religion, while science continues to flourish by eliminating its flaws and unfolding new horizons of understanding.

However, there is also reason for hope, for amidst the sea of medieval bigots dominating the domain of religion, there are also priests and preachers who are bringing in a whiff of fresh air.

You see, no field of society is reformed on its own. It is reformed by the actions of people involved in it.

So if there is to be reform in religion, the practitioners of religion - priests, preachers, nuns, monks and every such individual, must come forward, before everyone else, and set an example as advocates of harmony and growth.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Vatican Virus: The Forbidden Fiction

“Once a man came up to me on the street and asked furiously, 'you keep shouting about religious harmony - what is your own religion?' I smiled and said, 'if you are catholic, think of me as a muslim and hit me - if you are a muslim, think of me as a kafir and hit me - if you are an atheist, think of me as a believer and hit me - because my friend - to love in exchange of hate, is my religion.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Şehit Sevda Society: Even in Death I Shall Live

“Muslim Not Terrorist (The Sonnet)

I am a Muslim, not a terrorist,
Just like not all whites are neonazi.
To hate, being an animal is enough,
Love is a sign of sapience and sanity.
Nobody is infidel to me,
For my faith is that of oneness.
Disbelief doesn't make one a kafir,
Only kafir is one without kindness.
No matter what we call water,
It quenches everybody's thirst equally.
I accept all religions to be true and equal,
For what matters is our common humanity.
I have but one message, love over all hatred.
Without love nobody's human, no matter our faith.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Handcrafted Humanity: 100 Sonnets For A Blunderful World

“Without love nobody's human, no matter our faith.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Handcrafted Humanity: 100 Sonnets For A Blunderful World