Thank God, Under Our Constitution
"Thank God, under our Constitution there was no connection between Church and State, and that in my action as President of the United States I recognized no distinction of creeds in my appointments office."
James K. Polk
Our Reliance is in the Love of Liberty
"Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in us. Our defense is in the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you will have planted the seeds of despotism at your own doors. Familiarize yourself with the chains of bondage, and you prepare your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of others, you have lost the genious of your own independence and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tryant who rises among you."
Abraham Lincoln, Speech at Edwardsville, IL, 1858.
I am Tolerant of All Creeds
"I am tolerant of all creeds. Yet if any sect suffered itself to be used for political objects I would meet it by political opposition. In my view church and state should be separate, not only in form, but fact. Religion and politics should not be mingled."
Millard Fillmore (1809-1865) 13th U.S. President (Millard Fillmore, address during the 1856 presidential election; from Albert Menendez and Edd Doerr, eds., Great Quotations on Religious Freedom, Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 2002, p. 70.)
I Consider
"I consider the government of the United States as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, disciplines or exercises."
Jefferson's Letter to Rev. Mr. Millar, Jan. 23,1808 (Words of Thomas Jefferson, Vol 5, pg 236.)
Almighty God Hath Created
"Almighty God hath created the mind free; all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments of burdens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in His almighty power to do."
Thomas Jefferson, Acts for Establishing Religious Freedom in Virginia, 1785.
I Contemplate with Sovereign Reverence
" ... I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should `make no law respecting establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and state."
Thomas Jefferson, Letter, Danbury Baptist Assn. January 1, 1802
The Government of the United States
"The Government of the United States is not in any sense founded upon the Christian Religion."
1797 the treaty of Tripoli, signed by President Washington, and approved by the Senate of the United States
Every Man Conducting Himself as a Good Citizen
"Every man, conducting himself as a good citizen, and being accountable to God alone for his religious opinions, ought to be protected in worshiping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience."
George Washington, Letter, United Baptist Chamber of Virginia May 1789