“If we are correct in placing the beginning of the Time of the End at 1799, we should expect that there the falling into the error of church and state union would measurably cease, though it might require long years for the full recovery out of that snare of the devil. Looking back, we find that facts exactly correspond with this. Since that date there have been separations between empires and churches, but no new unions. Really, this date marks a new reformation on a more substantial basis. The influence of the Papacy over the kingdoms of Europe had previously been so great that its curses were dreaded by the nations as a withering blight, and its blessings desired for national prosperity. When Protestants separated from Papacy, they were received by the world as being merely a less corrupt substitute for the Papacy; and their favor, advice or sanction was often very similarly sought. But when Napoleon boldly ignored both the blessings and the curses of Papacy, and yet prospered phenomenally, his course not only greatly weakened the Papal influence of the various Protestant systems, in matters civil and political - which influence has grown very strong in two and a half centuries.”

17 U.S. (4 Wheaton) 316, 411-412
McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)
Context: In America, the powers of sovereignty are divided between the Government of the Union and those of the States. They are each sovereign with respect to the objects committed to it, and neither sovereign with respect to the objects committed to the other. We cannot comprehend that train of reasoning, which would maintain that the extent of power granted by the people is to be ascertained not by the nature and terms of the grant, but by its date. Some State Constitutions were formed before, some since, that of the United States. We cannot believe that their relation to each other is in any degree dependent upon this circumstance. Their respective powers must, we think, be precisely the same as if they had been formed at the same time. Had they been formed at the same time, and had the people conferred on the General Government the power contained in the Constitution, and on the States the whole residuum of power, would it have been asserted that the Government of the Union was not sovereign, with respect to those objects which were intrusted to it, in relation to which its laws were declared to be supreme? If this could not have been asserted, we cannot well comprehend the process of reasoning which maintains that a power appertaining to sovereignty cannot be connected with that vast portion of it which is granted to the General Government, so far as it is calculated to subserve the legitimate objects of that Government.

1980s

Invented in * 2014-05-06
In Landmark Decision, Supreme Court Strikes Down Main Reason Country Was Started
Andy Borowitz
The Borowitz Report
The New Yorker
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2014/05/in-landmark-decision-supreme-court-strikes-down-main-reason-country-was-started.html
2014-05-18.
Satirizing his decision in Greece v. Galloway.
Misattributed

[Consolmagno, Guy, Mueller, Paul, https://www.google.com/books?id=lf5vDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA16, 9780804136952, Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial?: And Other Questions from the Astronomers' In-Box at the Vatican Observatory, 16, 2014, Image]

Explaining his refusal to sign a "National Day of Prayer" proclamation (6 May 1999)
Context: I believe in the separation of church and state... We all have our own religious beliefs. There are people out there who are atheists, who don't believe at all... They are all citizens of Minnesota and I have to respect that.

Nobel Address (1991)
Context: A period of transition to a new quality in all spheres of society's life is accompanied by painful phenomena. When we were initiating perestroika we failed to properly assess and foresee everything. Our society turned out to be hard to move off the ground, not ready for major changes which affect people's vital interests and make them leave behind everything to which they had become accustomed over many years. In the beginning we imprudently generated great expectations, without taking into account the fact that it takes time for people to realize that all have to live and work differently, to stop expecting that new life would be given from above.

Source: Humanity Comes of Age, A study of Individual and World Fulfillment (1950), Chapter II Planning a Model World

Speech on November 14, 1933 as quoted in Under the Axe of Fascism, Gaetano Salvemini, London, UK, Victor Gollancz Ltd. (1936) p. 131
1930s