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Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think,
recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one
particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Most non-Catholics know that the Catholic schools are rendering a greater
service to our nation than the public schools in which subversive textbooks
have been used, in which Communist-minded teachers have taught, and from
whose classrooms Christ and even God Himself are barred.
- from "Our Sunday Visitor", an American-Catholic newspaper, 1949

Those of us who believe in the right of any human being to belong to whatever
church he sees fit, and to worship God in his own way, cannot be accused
of prejudice when we do not want to see public education connected with
religious control of the schools, which are paid for by taxpayers' money.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Spiritual leadership should remain spiritual leadership and the temporal
power should not become too important in any church.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Truth has always been found to promote the best interests of mankind...
- Percy Bysshe Shelley

If atheism is to be used to express the state of mind in which God is
identified with the unknowable, and theology is pronounced to be a
collection of meaningless words about unintelligible chimeras, then
I have no doubt, and I think few people doubt, that atheists are as
plentiful as blackberries...
- Leslie Stephen (1832-1904), literary essayist, author

It is wrong always, everywhere and for everyone to believe anything upon
insufficient evidence.
- W. K. Clifford, British philosopher, circa 1876

Why, when no honest man will deny in private that every ultimate problem is
wrapped in the profoundest mystery, do honest men proclaim in pulpits
that unhesitating certainty is the duty of the most foolish and ignorant?
Is it not a spectacle to make the angels laugh?  We are a company of
ignorant beings, feeling our way through mists and darkness, learning only
be incessantly repeated blunders, obtaining a glimmering of truth by
falling into every conceivable error, dimly discerning light enough for
our daily needs, but hopelessly differing whenever we attempt to describe
the ultimate origin or end of our paths; and yet, when one of us ventures
to declare that we don't know the map of the universe as well as the map
of our infintesimal parish, he is hooted, reviled, and perhaps told that
he will be damned to all eternity for his faithlessness...
- Leslie Stephen, "An agnostic's Apology", Fortnightly Review, 1876

Till then we shall be content to admit openly, what you (religionists)
whisper under your breath or hide in technical jargon, that the ancient
secret is a secret still; that man knows nothing of the Infinite and
Absolute; and that, knowing nothing, he had better not be dogmatic about
his ignorance.  And, meanwhile, we will endeavour to be as charitable as
possible, and whilst you trumpet forth officially your contempt for our
skepticism, we will at least try to believe that you are imposed upon
by your own bluster.
- Leslie Stephen, "An agnostic's Apology", Fortnightly Review, 1876

Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.
- Voltaire