Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American politician Richard Mentor Johnson.
Last updated on November 9, 2024.
Richard Mentor Johnson was an American lawyer and politician who served as the ninth vice president of the United States, serving from 1837 to 1841 under President Martin Van Buren. He is the only vice president elected by the United States Senate under the provisions of the Twelfth Amendment. Johnson also represented Kentucky in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. He began and ended his political career in the Kentucky House of Representatives.
Let the professors of Christianity recommend their religion by deeds of benevolence - by Christian meekness - by lives of temperance and holiness.
What other nations call religious toleration, we call religious rights. They are not exercised in virtue of governmental indulgence, but as rights, of which government cannot deprive any portion of citizens, however small.
Our Constitution recognises no other power than that of persuasion, for enforcing religious observances.
Their moral influence will then do infinitely more to advance the true interests of religion, than any measures which they may call on Congress to enact.
It is not the legitimate province of the Legislature to determine which religion is true, or what false. Our government is a civil, and not a religious institution.
Among all the religious persecutions with which almost every page of modern history is stained, no victim ever suffered but for violation of what Government denominated the law of God. To prevent a similar train of evils in this country, the Constitution has wisely withheld from our Government the power of defining the divine law.