Religious Liberty

Famous quotes containing the words religious liberty, religious and/or liberty:

    [Religious liberty was] in its nature an inalienable right ... because the opinions of men, depending only upon the evidence contemplated by their minds, cannot follow the dictates of other men.
    James Madison (1751–1836)

    I have been grateful to you from the day you turned your attention to the follies and fanaticisms of religious sects. Against those fools and impostors you employ the most appropriate weapons: to use others would be to imitate them. It is by ridicule that they must be attacked, and by scorn that they must be punished.
    Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)

    As liberty of thought is absolute, so is liberty of speech, which is “inseparable” from the liberty of thought. Liberty of speech, moreover, is essential not only for its own sake but for the sake of truth, which requires absolute liberty for the utterance of unpopular and even demonstrably false opinions.
    Gertrude Himmelfarb (b. 1922)