“Government has no more to do with the religions opinions of men, than it has with the principles of mathematics.”

— John Leland (Baptist)

The Rights of Conscience Inalienable (1791)
Context: Government has no more to do with the religions opinions of men, than it has with the principles of mathematics. Let every man speak freely without fear, maintain the principles that he believes, worship according to his own faith, either one God, three Gods, no God, or twenty Gods; and let government protect him in so doing, i. e., see that he meets with no personal abuse, or loss of property, from his religious opinions. (p. 184)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Government has no more to do with the religions opinions of men, than it has with the principles of mathematics." by John Leland (Baptist)?

John Leland (Baptist) 7

American Baptist minister 1754–1841

Related quotes

“Religion has no more place in science than science has in religion.”

Louis Pasteur (1822–1895) French chemist and microbiologist

Answer from Pasteur to his disciple Elie Metchnikoff when was questioned whether his approach to spontaneous generation was bound to a religious ideal. According to Patrice Debré's Luis Pasteur, 2000 https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=RzOcl-FLw30C&lpg=PP1&pg=PA176#v=onepage&q&f=false,, p. 176.
Disputed

“Truth, in the matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

The Critic as Artist (1891), Part I

“One has so many more opinions about what has gone wrong than about what is perfect.”

Nick Hornby book Songbook

Source: 31 Songs

“Religion has nothing more to fear than not being sufficiently understood.”

Stanisław Leszczyński (1677–1766) king of Poland

No. 36.
Maxims and Moral Sentences

“I think that our popular theology has gained in decorum, and not in principle, over the superstitions it has displaced. But men are better than this theology.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

A statement in this passage is sometimes paraphrased: "Men are better than their theology."
1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Compensation
Context: I think that our popular theology has gained in decorum, and not in principle, over the superstitions it has displaced. But men are better than this theology. Their daily life gives it the lie. Every ingenuous and aspiring soul leaves the doctrine behind him in his own experience; and all men feel sometimes the falsehood which they cannot demonstrate. For men are wiser than they know. That which they hear in schools and pulpits without after-thought, if said in conversation, would probably be questioned in silence. If a man dogmatize in a mixed company on Providence and the divine laws, he is answered by a silence which conveys well enough to an observer the dissatisfaction of the hearer, but his incapacity to make his own statement.

“The most vicious cowboy has more moral principle than the average Indian.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

January 1886, in a campaign speech given in New York https://www.history.com/news/teddy-roosevelt-race-imperialism-national-parks
1880s

“From the same it proceedeth, that men gives different names, to one and the same thing, from the difference of their own passions: As they that approve a private opinion, call it Opinion; but they that mislike it, Haeresie: and yet haeresie signifies no more than private opinion; but has only agreater tincture of choler”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

The First Part, Chapter 11, p. 50
Leviathan (1651)

“The regime is not reformable. We tried it for 20 years. The central issue is to do away with the theocracy. A secular government is a prerequisite to democracy. It's in the best interest of the clerical establishment, too: the sanctity of religion has been most damaged by religious governance. The regime has been presenting everyone secular as anti-religion. The violence has been committed in the name of religion.”

Reza Pahlavi (1960) Last crown prince of the former Imperial State of Iran

As quoted in Iran’s Royal Opposition http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/02/10/iran-s-royal-opposition.html, The Daily Beast, Feb 10, 2010.
Interviews, 2010

“Men do not make laws. They do but discover them. Laws must be justified by something more than the will of the majority. They must rest on the eternal foundation of righteousness. That state is most fortunate in its form of government which has the aptest instruments for the discovery of law.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

Speech to the Massachusetts State Senate http://friesian.com/ross/ca40/2002.htm#war (7 January 1914).
1910s, Speech to the Massachusetts State Senate (1914)

“In my opinion the religion that makes men rebel and fight against their government is not the genuine article, nor is the religion the right sort which reconciles them to the idea of eating their bread in the sweat of other men's faces. It is not the kind to get to heaven on.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

As quoted in Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, 1847-1865 https://archive.org/details/recollectionsab00lamogoog (1895), by Ward Hill Lamon, p. 90
1860s

“Government has no more to do with the religions opinions of men, than it has with the principles of mathematics.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

John Leland (Baptist) 7

Related quotes

Related topics