Quotes About Religious Rights

#1. In a free government, the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights. It consists in the one case in the multiplicity of interests, and in the other in the multiplicity of sects.

Alexander Hamilton

#2. If I could have entertained the slightest apprehension that the Constitution framed in the Convention where I had the honor to preside might possibly endanger the religious rights of any ecclesiastical society, certainly I would never have placed my signature to it.

George Washington

#3. Whenever equality rights and religious rights collide, equality rights trump.

Vic Toews

#4. The Republic of Macedonia is being built on democratic ideals and values, not on ethnic groups. Those ideals and values include economic opportunities, language and educational opportunities, religious rights, and political processes.

Boris Trajkovski

#5. The liberty of the Press is the Palladium of all the civil, political and religious rights of an Englishman.

Junius

#6. The clergy, by getting themselves established by law and in-grafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil and religious rights of man.

Thomas Jefferson

#7. What other nations call religious toleration, we call religious rights. They are not exercised in virtue of governmental indulgence, but as rights, of which government cannot deprive any portion of citizens, however small.

Richard Mentor Johnson

#8. We are persuaded that good Christians will always be good citizens, and that where righteousness prevails among individuals the Nation will be great and happy. Thus while just government protects all in their religious rights, true religion affords to government it's surest support.

George Washington

#9. The measure of a society is found in how they treat their weakest and most helpless citizens. As Americans, we are blessed with circumstances that protect our human rights and our religious freedom, but for many people around the world, deprivation and persecution have become a way of life.

Jimmy Carter

#10. No, you can't deny women their basic rights and pretend it's about your 'religious freedom'. If you don't like birth control, don't use it. Religious freedom doesn't mean you can force others to live by your own beliefs.

Barack Obama

#11. We have no right to prejudice another in his civil enjoyments because he is of another church.

Thomas Jefferson

#12. I do care if religious doctrine becomes an excuse to exclude my fellow citizens from the rights and protections our country promises.

Bill Keller

#13. Those people who want to express their religious beliefs on public property should enjoy the same rights that we provide to those protesting the war in Iraq.

Ernest Istook

#14. Church doctrine has no place in secular law. You can't take away people's rights to meet your own religious criteria.

Marie Sexton

#15. The basic problem affecting the Pakistan today is human rights. Islamic fundamentalists have no roots among the common people and while they are pushing hard for religious fundamentalists to take hold, the common people still seek change through humanitarian and common human rights law.

Abdul Sattar Edhi

#16. Democratic societies can no longer give religious fanatics a free hand to abuse and murder non believers. Such action betrays contempt for the basic human rights which animate any democracy with meaning.

Armstrong Williams

#17. The movement to abolish the death penalty needs the religious community because the heart of religion is about compassion, human rights, and the indivisible dignity of each human person made in the image of God.

Helen Prejean

#18. I would sign an executive order protecting religious liberty, our first amendment rights, so Christian business owners and individuals don't face discrimination for having a traditional view of marriage.

Bobby Jindal

#19. What we have seen in recent years in the United States is the church's rights to express itself, and to conduct its own affairs, being insidiously eroded.

Bruce L. Shelley

#20. The Obama administration has refused to back down on the insurance mandate that needlessly pits health care against the rights of the religious ... This administration simply doesn't get it.

Rob Portman

#21. I love the ACLU and I'm concerned now, especially when it comes to our rights, with current politics and the religious community and the Conservative majority or minority - I don't know who they are.

Debbie Harry

#22. Today's secular libertarians, who want to remove biblical religion from public life, have trouble making sense of the civil rights movement because it was so clearly a religiously inspired movement that entered the public arena and made a major difference in American life.

Bruce L. Shelley

#23. Your right of religious freedom ends where my right of religious abstinence begins ...

T. Rafael Cimino

#24. The argument on the other side of special rights is completely bogus. It's bogus because you could make exactly the same claim about racial or ethnic or religious minorities.

Tom Allen

#25. A corporation is simply a form of organization used by human beings to achieve desired ends. Protecting the free-exercise rights of corporations like Hobby Lobby, Conestoga, and Mardel protects the religious liberty of the humans who own and control those companies.

Samuel Alito

#26. The way liberals are interpreting the First Amendment today is that it prevents anyone who is religious from being in government.

Rush Limbaugh

#27. The rights essential to happiness ... We claim them from a higher source - from the King of kings and Lord of all the earth.

John Dickinson

#28. Religious people are not entitled to special rights, even if they are elected leaders or in the majority; they are not allowed to force everyone to support their religion.

Ed Buckner

#29. I support the rights of all people to practice their religious beliefs privately, but I oppose the idea of respecting religions. In truth, I have no respect for any religion. I believe religion is not compatible with human rights, women's rights, or freedom of expression.

Taslima Nasrin

#30. Contrary to all the blather we here about the unique goodness of the American people or our religious heritage or anything else, the one thing that set this country apart from all others was the Bill of Rights.

Harry Browne

#31. Blessed be the memory of those few brethren who contended so strenuously for their constitutional rights and religious freedom, against such an overwhelming force of desperadoes!

Joseph Smith Jr.

#32. Like being a woman, like being a racial religious tribal or ethnic minority, being LGBT does not make you less human. And that is why gay rights are human rights and human rights are gay rights.

Hillary Clinton

#33. India is a vibrant nation whose strength lies in its commitment to equal rights and to speech, religious and economic freedoms that enrich the lives of all citizens. India is not only the world's largest democracy; it is also a secular, pluralistic society committed to inclusive growth.

Henry Paulson

#34. President Obama understands that, as a nation founded by those who fled religious persecution, freedom of religion is central to who we are as Americans. Our rights are not given to us by government, they are endowed by our Creator.

Denis McDonough

#35. What does religious freedom mean if we would use it as a cover for hate and privilege?

DaShanne Stokes

#36. The psychedelic issue is a civil rights and civil liberties issue. It is an issue concerned with the most basic of human freedoms: religious practice and the privacy of the individual mind.

Terence McKenna

#37. Human rights and individual liberties, including religious freedom, will be at the heart of the new Iraq.

Jalal Talabani

#38. Her [Jurdge Sandra Day O'Connor] judgment has also been critical in protecting our environmental rights. She joined in 5-4 majorities affirming reproductive freedom and religious freedom and the Voting Rights Act.

Patrick Leahy

#39. The right to criticize: the right to hold unpopular beliefs; the right to protest; the right of independent thought. The exercise of these rights should not cost one single American citizen his reputation or his right to a livelihood ... Otherwise none of us could call our souls our own.

Margaret Chase Smith

#40. Our world is utterly saturated with fear. We fear being attacked by religious extremists, both foreign and domestic. We fear the loss of political rights, a loss of privacy, or a loss of freedom. We fear being injured, robbed or attacked, being judged by others, or neglected, or left unloved.

Brendan Myers

#41. Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry ...

Thomas Jefferson

#42. A man can lead a reasonably full life without a family, a fixed local residence, or a religious affiliation, but if he is stateless he is nothing. He has no rights, no security, and little opportunity for a useful career. There is no salvation on earth outside the framework of an organized state.

Joseph Reese Strayer

#43. Spirituality is human equality. Spirituality is human rights. They are one and the same thing," Lord Fire replied "To act as if you are religious or spiritual whilst treating other people unequally or as an inferior means you are nothing but a fraud."

Book 5 - The King of Control

M.C. Rooney

#44. You cannot defend human rights without fighting religious fanatics - regardless of one's own religious experience - it is unavoidable. Why? Because they are the ones who take issue with how other people live their lives instead of minding their own business.

Christina Engela

#45. The critical question is how a religious tradition is interpreted. Is it interpreted in ways that are pro-human rights or in ways that are a throwback to the Dark Ages?

Khaled Abou El Fadl

#46. The real reason people oppose marriage equality is religious in nature. Marriage equality is therefore not only a civil rights issue, but also a separation-of-church-and-state issue.

David Silverman

#47. In Turkey the religious minorities have more rights than they do in Europe.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan

#48. The movie industry would never purposely offend homosexuals, native Americans, environmentalists, animal rights activists, or women's groups, but they don't think twice about something that might offend Christians.

Tim LaHaye

#49. While we welcome people of all faiths in America we cannot be so naive as to expect all countries to do the same. But we cannot allow their cultural mores to snuff out our religious freedoms or the freedom of women to have equal rights.

Michael Huffington

#50. Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind.

John Adams

#51. The opinions of men should not be the object of any government. Our civil rights are no more dependent on our religious beliefs than they are dependent upon our thoughts about geometry or physics!

Thomas Jefferson

#52. Making Saudi Arabia a world judge on women's rights and religious freedom would be like naming a pyromaniac as the town fire chief.

Hillel Neuer

#53. By increasing the amount of Torah (obligatory religious laws) in the world, they were extending His presence in the world and making it more effective.

Karen Armstrong

#54. Freedom sees in religion the companion of its struggles and its triumphs, the cradle of its infancy, the divine source of its rights. It considers religion as the safeguard of mores; and mores as the guarantee of laws and the pledge of its duration.

Alexis De Tocqueville

#55. No American president can support an Egypt that calls into question the historic treaty between Israel and Egypt. And no American president can support an Egypt that doesn't fully recognize women's rights or the rights of religious minorities.

Condoleezza Rice

#56. I was raised with no religious training or influence. Except the influence was to be a moral and ethical person at the secular level. And to be a peace marcher, an activist for civil rights, peace and justice.

Anne Lamott

#57. Of strong importance to me is the defense of minority rights, not just racial minorities, but ideological and religious minorities.

Rand Paul

#58. America was founded to be a beacon of liberty, particularly religious liberty. The framers of our Constitution sought to preserve religious liberty to such an extent that they made it the first right protected in the Bill of Rights.

Edwin Meese

#59. I believe that the real expression of your religious beliefs is shown in the daily pattern of your life, in what you contribute to your surroundings and what you take away without infringing on the rights of other people.

Judy Garland

#60. The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all the children of the nation equally.

Patrick Pearse

#61. And also a lot of Muslims are no more religious then the average Swede. For them it's natural that human rights come first.

Bjorn Ulvaeus

#62. When you have an organization that's neither political nor religious and doesn't take part in the civil rights struggle, what can it call itself? It's in a vacuum.

Malcolm X

#63. Christianity is our foe. If animal rights is to succeed, we must destroy the Judeo-Christian religious tradition.

Peter Singer

#64. Air Force officials appear to be more concerned with appeasing the powerful Religious Right lobbyists who have argued against any guidelines that seek to respect and protect the rights of all cadets
not just those adhering to majority religious beliefs.

Barry W. Lynn

#65. We must recognize the fundamental rights of man. There can be no true national life in our democracy unless we give unqualified recognition to freedom of religious worship and freedom of education.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

#66. Women were everywhere in the revolution. Women participated in it, and many women were killed. Then we had the right to speak up and gain some more rights, but what happened was there was a backlash. Why? Because we have the Salafists, Muslim Brothers, religious groups.

Nawal El Saadawi

#67. The Obama Administration's obsession with forcing mandates on the American people has now reached a new low by violating the conscience rights and religious liberties of our people.

Marco Rubio

#68. The religious wars showed that the Christian faith was no longer Europe's unifying force. A new common ground was needed, and it was found in reason, which is something that is shared by all of mankind. This was one of the roots of the Enlightenment and its concept of universal human rights.

Walter Kasper

#69. The basic human rights documents-the American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man-were written by political, not by religious, leaders.

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

#70. The idea of legally establishing inalienable, inherent and sacred rights of the individual is not of political but religious origin.

George Jellinek

#71. I've fought for religious freedom and I can tell you that anti-gay 'religious freedom' bills aren't it.

DaShanne Stokes

#72. Fundamentalists tell us to fear the specter of special rights for gay citizens, though of course gay Americans aren't after special rights - merely equal rights. The irony is that special rights actually do exist in this country-for religious groups.

Sean Faircloth

#73. The liberty enjoyed by the people of these states of worshiping Almighty God agreebly to their conscience, is not only among the choicest of their blessings, but also of their rights.

George Washington

#74. The civil rights of none, shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretext infringed.

James Madison

#75. If a person is homosexual by nature - that is, if one's sexuality is as intrinsic a part of one's identity as gender or skin color - then society can no more deny a gay person access to the secular rights and religious sacraments because of his homosexuality than it can reinstate Jim Crow.

Jon Meacham

#76. You are only a flying Dutch
while the Rights of The Royals
have already died.
Religious Leader Petra Cecilia Maria Hermans
The Religion Of The Blue Circle
October 31, 2016

Petra Hermans

#77. In the Islamic Republic the rights of the religious minorities are respectfully regarded.

Ruhollah Khomeini

#78. Of course, there are dangers in religious freedom and freedom of opinion. But to deny these rights is worse than dangerous, it is absolutely fatal to liberty.

Harry S. Truman

#79. It is quite unlawful to demand, defend, or to grant unconditional freedom of thought, or speech, of writing or worship, as if these were so many rights given by nature to man.

Pope Leo XIII

#80. I don't know of many evangelicals who want to deny gay couples their legal rights. However, most of us don't want to call it marriage, because we think that word has religious connotations, and we're not ready to see it used in ways that offend us.

Tony Campolo