A Quote by Ellen Willis

For democrats, it's as crucial to defend secular culture as to preserve secular law. And in fact the two projects are inseparable: When religion defines morality, the wall between church and state comes to be seen as immoral.

Ellen Willis

Quote Topics

Between Church Church And State Crucial Culture Defend Defines Democrats Fact Immoral In Fact Inseparable Law Morality Preserve Projects Religion Secular Seen State Two Wall

Quote Author

Ellen Willis
American - Writer
December 14, 1941 - November 9, 2006

The Way is not a religion: Christianity is the end of religion. 'Religion' means here the division between sacred and secular concerns, other-worldliness, man's reaching toward God in a way which projects his own thoughts.

David Kirk

With the time, yes we can be worried, because the secular state should reflect secular society, and this secular society, with the time, if you don't get rid of those terrorists and these extremists and the Wahabi style, of course it will influence at least the new and the coming generations.

Bashar al-Assad

The Salafists are trying to abort the revolution and make it religious, though the revolution started secular. There was not a single Islamic slogan. It was secular men and women, and in fact, they were unified. Now they want to divide the revolution, and religion is a very strong weapon.

Nawal El Saadawi

The problem is efforts by liberals to establish a wall between religion and society, in the guise of maintaining the wall between church and state.

Irving Kristol

It is the wall of separation between church and state . . . that is largely responsible for religion thriving in this country, as compared to those European countries in which church and state have been united, resulting in opposition to the church by those who disapprove of the government.

Alan Dershowitz

I'm not against religion in the sense that I feel I can't tolerate it, but I think written into the rubric of religion is the certainty of its own truth. And since there are 6,000 religions currently on the face of the earth, they can't all be right. And only the secular spirit can guarantee those freedoms and it's the secular spirit that they contest.

Ian Mcewan

The fact that institutional churches have gone into decline doesn't mean that we're going to enter some purely secular age. Secular people need to be aware of that.

Ross Douthat

We need to employ a secular approach to ethics, secular in the Indian sense of respecting all religious traditions and even the views of non-believers in an unbiased way. Secular ethics rooted in scientific findings, common experience and common sense can easily be introduced into the secular education system. If we can do that there is a real prospect of making this 21st century an era of peace and compassion.

Dalai Lama

The Catholic teaching against murder, for example, is largely the same as our secular laws. But as a law, it obviously has a secular rationale at least as strong as its religious rationale.

Mario Cuomo

There's one profound difference between secular and religious pilgrimages. It's inconceivable that a Muslim would feel a sense of anticlimax when reaching Mecca. But for a secular pilgrim, the potential for disappointment is always there.

Geoff Dyer

Politics and morality are inseparable. And as morality's foundation is religion, religion and politics are necessarily related. We need religion as a guide. We need it because we are imperfect, and our government needs the church, because only those humble enough to admit they're sinners can bring to democracy the tolerance it requires in order to survive.

Ronald Reagan

If I were a dictator, religion and state would be separate. I swear by my religion. I will die for it. But it is my personal affair. The state has nothing to do with it. The state would look after your secular welfare, health, communications, foreign relations, currency and so on, but not your or my religion. That is everybody's personal concern!

Mahatma Gandhi

It can have a secular purpose and have a relationship to God because God was presumed to be both over the state and the church, and separation of church and state was never meant to separate God from government.

Roy Moore

Christians - at least Christians in a liberal democracy - have accepted, after Thomas Hobbes, that they must obey the secular rule of law; that there must be a separation of church and state.