“It is difficult to discern a serious threat to religious liberty from a room of silent, thoughtful schoolchildren.”

— Sandra Day O'Connor

Upholding the constitutionality of a "moment of silent prayer" in schools in Wallce v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38 (1985) (concurring).

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Sandra Day O'Connor 9

Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United… 1930

Thomas Harris Red Dragon

Source: Red Dragon

“The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty.”

Eugene McCarthy (1916–2005) American politician

Time magazine (12 February 1979)

“The NARROW-MINDED BIGOTS have given to this country and to the world freedom of speech, freedom of thought and action and religious liberty.”

William Randolph Hearst (1863–1951) American newspaper publisher

Communication to the American Crime Study Commission (May 19, 1929)

“The idea that religious liberty is the generating principle of civil, and that civil liberty is the necessary condition of religious, was a discovery reserved for the seventeenth century.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

The History of Freedom in Christianity (1877)

“Not dangerous at all. Not even that lucky. But a sufficiently paranoid mind will discern patterns and threats where only fortune has conspired.”

Glen Cook book Water Sleeps

Source: Water Sleeps (1999), Chapter 30 (p. 112)

“Human society is born in the shadow of religious fear, and in that stage the suppression of heresy is a sacred social duty. Then comes the rise of a priesthood, and the independent thinker is met with punishment in this world and the threat of eternal damnation hereafter. Even today it is from the religious side that the greatest danger to freedom of thought comes. Religion is the last thing that man will civilise.”

Chapman Cohen (1868–1954) British atheist and secularist writer and lecturer

Quoted in The Freethinker, Vol. 84 (G.W. Foote, 1964), p. 215.

“The Gamers are so out of touch with reality that they were never considered a serious threat.”

Larry Niven book Dream Park

Source: Dream Park (1981), Chapter 10, “Neutral Scent” (p. 140)

“Religious liberty came not from the Reformation or from the sects as a whole but from particular sects...especially those which the Reformation sought to exterminate.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

Private notes, quoted in Herbert Butterfield, ‘Acton: His Training, Methods and Intellectual System’, in A. O. Sarkissian (ed.), Studies in Diplomatic History and Historiography in honour of G. P. Gooch, C.H. (1961), p. 194
Undated

“There is no room for play in Islam … It is deadly serious about everything.”

Ruhollah Khomeini (1902–1989) Religious leader, politician

Speech in Qum, as quoted in Portrait of an Ascetic Despot, Time, January 7, 1980, 2007-02-02 http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,923857,00.html,
Attributed

“Liberty is only valued when it is threatened, therefore it is the threat that highlights the value.”

David Gemmell book Legend

Source: Drenai series, Legend, Pt 1: Against the Horde, Ch. 9
Context: Liberty is only valued when it is threatened, therefore it is the threat that highlights the value. We should be grateful to the Nadir, since they heighten the value of our liberty.

“It is difficult to discern a serious threat to religious liberty from a room of silent, thoughtful schoolchildren.”

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Sandra Day O'Connor 9

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