Quote

Religion flourishes in greater purity, without than with the aid of Government.

How can you have the religion of the sovereign be the religion of the state if the sovereign belongs to many religions? And it's at that point, I think, historically, that you start to see people saying maybe the state should not associate itself with any religion. Maybe there shouldn't be any official religion.

Government needs to stay out of the religion business altogether.

When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives.

A union of government and religion tends to destroy government and degrade religion.

The way to preserve the peace of the church is to preserve its purity.

Each of us has the choice to attend the church we want to, or none at all. Separation of church and state allows for religions to have their own set of rules as to whom they will accept and who they won't, and the practices they support and the ones they don't. They will continue to be able to do so.

Religion has been terribly tarnished in the course of time, its pristine purity has long since vanished under the regime of creed, and it is no longer Catholic, that is to say, Universal.

The separation of church and state was meant to protect church from state; a state that declares religion off limits in public life is a state that declares itself supreme over all religious values.

The government must pursue a course of complete neutrality toward religion.