Quotes on Religious Tolerance

Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one's own beliefs. Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others.

The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum.

If we ever forget that we are One Nation Under God, then we will be a nation gone under.

Ultimately, America's answer to the intolerant man is diversity, the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired.

Religion is like a pair of shoes.....Find one that fits for you, but don't make me wear your shoes.

The great decisions of government cannot be dictated by the concerns of religious factions. We have succeeded for 205 years in keeping the affairs of state separate from the uncompromising idealism of religious groups and we mustn't stop now. To retreat from that separation would violate the principles of conservatism and the values upon which the framers built this democratic republic.

It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.

Human diversity makes tolerance more than a virtue; it makes it a requirement for survival.

When the dust settles and the pages of history are written, it will not be the angry defenders of intolerance who have made the difference. The reward will go to those who dared to step outside the safety of their privacy in order to expose and rout the prevailing prejudices.

While religious tolerance is surely better than religious war, tolerance is not without its liabilities. Our fear of provoking religious hatred has rendered us incapable of criticizing ideas that are now patently absurd and increasingly maladaptive.

If being tolerant of differing opinions, if believing that America has to make it as a pluralistic nation, if being civil, if that makes you a liberal, I plead guilty.

Without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure.

I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.

Without God, there is no virtue because there is no prompting of the conscience... without God, there is a coarsening of the society; without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure.