Religious Rights Quotes

accommodate, within reason, the religious practices of workers and applicants unless they impose an "undue hardship" on the business. It is the latest in a line of Supreme Court cases that have elevated religious rights over secular interests, whether exercised by powerful corporations, government agencies or prison inmates. The majority opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia stressed two points that outline the role religion can have in the workplace. Employers must do more than handle religious practices in the same way they do secular ones, he wrote, because federal law gives faith-related expression "favored treatment, affirmatively obligating employers" to accommodate things they could otherwise refuse. Moreover, he wrote, an applicant or employee alleging religious discrimination doesn't have to prove the employer was motivated by bias. ~ Anonymous

Churchmen are quick to defend religious freedom; lawyers were never so universally aroused as by President Roosevelt's Court bill; newspapers are most alert to civil liberties when there is a hint of press censorship in the air. And educators become perturbed at every effort to curb academic freedom. But too seldom do all of these become militant when ostensibly the rights of only one group are threatened. They do not always react to the truism that when the rights of any individual or group are chipped away, the freedom of all erodes. ~ Earl Warren

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

The traditional religious right's failure to restore public-school prayer or pass an antiabortion constitutional amendment has likely helped fuel the spread of the more extreme dominionist school. ~ Jon Meacham

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

Rights mean you have a right to your life. You have a right to your liberty, and you should have a right to keep the fruits of your labor ... I, in a way, don't like to use those terms: gay rights, women's rights, minority rights, religious rights. There's only one type of right. It's the right to your liberty. ~ Ron Paul

When ISIS last year called for the destruction of the Yazidi people, President Obama said that would constitute genocide and he ordered U.S. forces to keep it from happening. Human rights advocates say Christians now face a similar threat Nina Shea directs the Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute. ~ Tom Gjelten

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

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

American Catholics are committed to building a society which is truly tolerant and inclusive, to safeguarding the rights of individuals and communities, and to rejecting every form of unjust discrimination. With countless other people of good will, they are likewise concerned that efforts to build a just and wisely ordered society respect their deepest concerns and their right to religious liberty. ~ Pope Francis

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

Bill Maher is right to condemn religious practices that violate fundamental human rights. Religious communities must do more to counter extremist interpretations of their faith. But failing to recognize that religion is embedded in culture - and making a blanket judgment about the world's second largest religion - is simply bigotry. ~ Reza Aslan

It is necessary for every American, with becoming energy to endeavor to stop the dissemination of principles evidently destructive of the cause for which they have bled. It must be the combined virtue of the rulers and of the people to do this, and to rescue and save their civil and religious rights from the outstretched arm of tyranny, which may appear under any mode or form of government. ~ Mercy Otis Warren

I heard the prophet Joseph Smith say the time would come when this nation would so far depart from its original purity, its glory, and its love for freedom and its protection of civil rights and religious rights, that the Constitution of our country would hang as it were by a thread. He said, also, that this people, the sons of Zion, would rise up and save the Constitution and bear it off triumphantly. ~ Eliza R. Snow

It's very irresponsible as a parent to follow Tipper Gore or the Religious Right's advice and just take the offending CD or game away from the kid without discussing it. ~ Jello Biafra

The decline and fall of the modern religious right's notion of a Christian America creates a calmer political environment and, for many believers, may help open the way for a more theologically serious religious life. ~ Jon Meacham

The nation has been turned upside down and inside out. The country that was once discovered by people seeking religious freedom is now oppressing religious rights. It has been a slow train rumbling down the track of destruction since the 1960's. It started with the removal of the Bible from our public schools. Next the generation known as the 'love generation' opened the door for the approval of sex outside of marriage. For every ten years since then, it's been a slippery slope of materialism, I got mine, what can you do for me, and money is power.
We as a nation have stopped focusing on God and family and replaced them with money and success. Parents are teaching their children to do whatever it takes to get ahead ... just don't get caught. If you do, find someone to blame it on. ~ Rick Mayhew

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

I am now speaking of rights under the Constitution, and not of moral or religious rights. I do not discuss the morals of the people of Missouri, but let them settle that matter for themselves. I hold that the people of the slaveholding States are civilized men as well as ourselves, that they bear consciences as well as we, and that they are accountable to God and their posterity and not to us. It is for them to decide therefore the moral and religious right of the slavery question for themselves within their own limits. ~ Stephen A. Douglas

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

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

Tolerance can be exercised only by those who have well-grounded convictions (although it will not always be exercised even by them). For such people tolerance is an act of self-abnegation; although they are convinced that those who differ from them must be wrong, they nevertheless will protect their rights. ~ Erik Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

Avan was as religious as the next young dragon with his way to make in the world-which is to say that he held many traditional beliefs which he had never paused to examine, attended church because it would have seemed strange not to, rarely paid much attention when he was there, and found piety out of the pulpit thoroughly misplaced. ~ Jo Walton

Siddhartha embarked on a mission that human civilization has been on since its inception – How to overcome pain and suffering in human life. Siddhartha was perhaps the first scientist on the planet who wanted to address pain and suffering at their roots. While every other thinker from every other religious traditions speculated on the goals of life and afterlife, such speculative queries were nonsensical for Siddhartha for in the mold of a true scientist, he saw no evidential basis for them. Siddhartha didn't even query what is pain, and where does it come from. He directed his query on how can pain and suffering be removed, an enquiry no speculative philosopher had undertaken before. ~ Ajit Kumar Jha

No political party has exclusive patent rights on prosperity. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

Conservatives forget that citizenship is more than a thing to withhold from immigrants. Progressives forget it's more than a set of rights. ~ Eric Liu

Saying a prayer won't make you a Christian. Placing your faith in Christ as your savior makes you a Christian. ~ Andy Stanley

I dream for a world which is free of child labour, a world in which every child goes to school. A world in which every child gets his rights. ~ Kailash Satyarthi

Very little of the great cruelty shown by men can really be attributed to cruel instinct. Most of it comes from thoughtlessness or inherited habit. The roots of cruelty, therefore, are not so much strong as widespread. But the time must come when inhumanity protected by custom and thoughtlessness will succumb before humanity championed by thought. Let us work that this time may come. ~ Albert Schweitzer

If Jesus remained dead, how can you explain the reality of the Christian church and its phenomenal growth in the first three centuries of the Christian era? Christ's church covered the Western world by the fourth century. A religious movement built on a lie could not have accomplished that ... All the power of Rome and of the religious establishment in Jerusalem was geared to stop the Christian faith. All they had to do was to dig up the grave and to present the corpse. They didn't. ~ Henry F. Schaefer, III

There cannot be peace in the Middle East without giving Palestinians their full rights. ~ Mohammed Morsi

What drew me to both study and activism was the formative experience of the civil rights movement. ~ David Price

Abraham had eight sons
not one. All eight sons bring something to the table. Abraham loved all of his sons. He was a good father who made sure all his sons were literate, of good character and shared a common ideology with their father, Abraham. Abraham did good. Where did we go wrong?
pg 54 ~ Michael Ben Zehabe

Jesus tells us not to be misled by the voices of strangers. There are so many strange voices being heard in the religious world of our day. We must compare what they say with the Word of God. ~ Billy Graham

True law necessarily is rooted in ethical assumptions or norms; and those ethical principles are derived, in the beginning at least, from religious convictions. When the religious understanding, from which a concept of law arose in a culture, has been discarded or denied, the laws may endure for some time, through what sociologists call "cultural lag"; but in the long run, the laws also will be discarded or denied.

With this hard truth in mind, I venture to suggest that the corpus of English and American laws--for the two arise for the most part from a common root of belief and experience--cannot endure forever unless it is animated by the spirit that moved it in the beginning: that is, by religion, and specifically by the Christian people. Certain moral postulates of Christian teaching have been taken for granted, in the past, as the ground of justice. When courts of law ignore those postulates, we grope in judicial darkness. . . .

We suffer from a strong movement to exclude such religious beliefs from the operation of courts of law, and to discriminate against those unenlightened who cling fondly to the superstitions of the childhood of the race.

Many moral beliefs, however, though sustained by religious convictions, may not be readily susceptible of "scientific" demonstration. After all, our abhorrence of murder, rape, and other crimes may be traced back to the Decalogue and other religious injunctions. If it can be shown that our oppositio ~ Russell Kirk

The religious upbringing that most people go through, and its association with Western religion, is all based on lies. At some point you either wake up and realise [that] they are lies, or you continue in a fog. I realised I had been lied to and wanted to know the truth. ~ Joel McLver

The callous use of general warrants and the disregard for the Bill of Rights must end. Forcing us to choose between our rights and our safety is a false choice and we are better than that as a nation and as a people. ~ Rand Paul

[A] high minded gallantry in defense of the foundations of Christian culture. ~ Pope Pius XII

Most terrorists are people deeply concerned by what they see as social, political, or religious injustice and hypocrisy, and the immediate grounds for their terrorism is often retaliation for an action of the United States. ~ William Blum

The Mennonites have Dirk Willems, who was arrested for his religious beliefs in the sixteenth century and held in a prison tower. With the aid of a rope made of knotted rags, he let himself down from the window and escaped across the castle's ice-covered moat. A guard gave chase. Willems made it safely to the other side. The guard did not, falling through the ice into the freezing water, and Willems stopped, went back, and pulled his pursuer to safety. For his act of compassion, he was taken back to prison, tortured, and then burned slowly at the stake as he repeated "Oh, my Lord, my God" seventy times over.8 ~ Malcolm Gladwell

Humanity has understood nothing. Religious, tribal, national wars continue. The world continues to be in a sea of blood. ~ Irena Sendler

Be wary of those propagating too much about liberty, ideology, and civility; they just might be oppressors in the making. ~ Aniruddha Sastikar

The way I see it, the attack on abortion rights is nothing less than an effort to put all women back in their place. ~ Willie Parker

I am telling you that your perception of ultimate reality is more limited than you thought, and that Truth is more unlimited than you can imagine. ~ Neale Donald Walsch

My body is not a tomb for animals. ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

William Butler Yeats's "Second Coming" seems perfectly to render our present predicament: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity." This is an excellent description of the current split between anaemic liberals and impassioned fundamentalists. "The best" are no longer able to fully engage, while "the worst" engage in racist, religious, sexist fanaticism.
However, are the terrorist fundamentalists, be they Christian or Muslim, really fundamentalists in the authentic sense of the term? Do they really believe? What they lack is a feature that is easy to discern in all authentic fundamentalists, from Tibetan Buddhists to the Amish in the U.S.: the absence of resentment and envy, the deep indifference towards the non-believers' way of life. If today's so-called fundamentalists really believe they have their way to truth, why should they feel threatened by non-believers, why should they envy them? When a Buddhist encounters a Western hedonist, he hardly condemns him. He just benevolently notes that the hedonist's search for happiness is self-defeating. In contrast to true fundamentalists, the terrorist pseudo-fundamentalists are deeply bothered, intrigued, fascinated by the sinful life of the non-believers. One can feel that, in fighting the sinful Other, they are fighting their own temptation. These so-called Christian or Muslim fundamentalists are a disgrace to true fundamentalists.
It is here that Yeats's diagnosis falls short ~ Slavoj Zizek

Visions are for the Heavens to see. ~ David Dweck

I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men. ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

Central to neoliberalism as a form of governance is the establishment of a personal responsibility system, by which the sphere of state responsibility contracts in the same measure as personal responsibility expands, privatizing social risk. ... This philosophy marks a significant shift in the liberal discourse of citizenship, supplanting the historical emphasis on rights with new emphasis on citizens' responsibilities. ~ Rebecca Stringer

In the 20th century, the position of the monarch as head of the Church of England was given a meaning which it never had before, .. You took the fact that the monarch was head of the Church of England to mean that the British monarchy was itself a religious or moral institution and the monarchy became a symbol of national public morality. ~ David Starkey

It is fair to judge peoples by the rights they will sacrifice most for. ~ Clarence Day

So, is there hope for a truly democratic Africa? Long answer: Only if continent-wide improvements in education, human rights and public health are coupled with an aggressive and far-sighted debt-relief program that breaks the cycle of subsistence farming and urban squalor. Short answer: No. ~ Jon Stewart

Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of a fundamental human right, the right to dignity and a decent life.
[ Live 8 Concert, Mary Fitzgerald Square, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2 July 2005] ~ Nelson Mandela

May you let the authentic colors of your heart illuminate and may you feel the light within others. ~ Leta B.

Words are merely utterances: noises that stand for feelings, thoughts, and experience. They are symbols. Signs. Insignias. They are not Truth. They are not the real thing. ~ Neale Donald Walsch

While many ethnic and religious groups are mainly focused on the afterlife and downplaying this world, Jews view wealth and success as a blessing and gift from God. ~ H.W. Charles

For this equality belongs to the post-Renaissance world of ideology-of political magic and the alchemical science" of politics. Envy is the basis of its broad appeal. And rampant envy, the besetting virus of modern society, is the most predictable result of insistence upon its realization. Furthermore, hue and cry over equality of opportunity and equal rights leads, a fortiori, to a final demand for equality of condition. Under its pressure self respect gives way in the large majority of men who have not reached the level of their expectation, who have no support from an inclusive identity, and who hunger for "revenge" on those who occupy a higher station and will (they expect) continue to enjoy that advantage. The end result is visible in the spiritual proletarians of the "lonely crowd." Bertrand de Jouvenel has described the process which produces such non-persons in his memorable study, On Power. They are the natural pawns of an impersonal and omnicompetent Leviathan. And to insure their docility such a state is certain to recruit a large "new class" of men, persons superior in "ability" and authority, both to their ostensible "masters" among the people and to such anachronisms as stand in their progressive way. Such is the evidence of the recent past and particularly of American history. Arrant individualism, fracturing and then destroying the hope of amity and confederation, the communal bond and the ancient vision of the good society as an extrapolation from family, is ~ M.E. Bradford

Since only an individual man can possess rights, the expression "individual rights"? is a redundancy (which one has to use for purposes of clarification in today's intellectual chaos). But the expression "collective rights"? is a contradiction in terms. ~ Ayn Rand

The basic religious idea in all patriarchal religions is the negation of the sexual needs. Only in very primitive religions were religiosity and sexuality identical. When social organization passed from matriarchy to patriarchy and class society, the unity of religious and sexual cult underwent a split; the religious cult became the antithesis of the sexual. With that, the cult of sexuality went out of existence. It was replaced by the brothel, pornography and backstairs-sexuality. It goes without saying that when sexual experiences ceased to be one with the religious cults, when, instead, they became antithetical to them, religious excitation assumed a new function: that of being a substitute for the lost sexual pleasure, now no longer affirmed by society. Only this contradiction inherent in religious excitation makes the strength and the tenacity of the religions understandable: the contradiction of its being at one and the same time antisexual and a substitute for sexuality. ~ Wilhelm Reich

In my view, we need a massive federal jobs program which puts millions of our people back to work. We must end our disastrous trade policies. We need to raise the minimum wage to a living wage. And we have to fight for pay equity for women. ~ Bernie Sanders

Don't wait until the moment of crisis. Plan ahead, hide God's Word in your heart, and pray in advance for victory, holiness, and a life pleasing to God. ~ David Jeremiah

I didn't have song rights for the first video because I didn't know that it was going to do what it did. So for the second video, I decided better safe than sorry. It is a really gray area as to whether or not you even need song rights to make a video like that. ~ Judson Laipply

The interaction, the interdependence, of life and death, which in nature is the source of an inexhaustible fecundity, is the basis of a set of analogies, to which agriculture and the rest of the human economy must conform in order to endure, and which is ultimately religious ... ~ Wendell Berry

To understand my feelings - and my conception of the role of Secretary General - the nature of my religious and cultural background must first be understood. I should therefore like to outline not only my beliefs but also my conception of human institutions and of the human situation itself. ~ U Thant

We need to put no confidence in the arm of flesh, but rather trust ourselves entirely to the arm of the Lord. ~ Joyce Meyer

[...] Within the religious realm, the same can be said about that type of'apologetics' that claims to agree with the results of modern science-an utterly illusory undertaking and one that constantly requires revision; one that also runs the risk of linking religion with changing and ephemeral conceptions, from which it must remain completely independent. ~ Rene Guenon