If our democracy is to flourish, it must have criticism; if our government is to function it must have dissent.

The Americans who framed our Constitution felt that without freedom of religion no other freedom counted.

History is a jangle of accidents, blunders, surprises and absurdities, and so is our knowledge of it, but if we are to report it at all we must impose some order upon it.

The decision for complete religious freedom and for separation of church and state in the eyes of the rest of the world was perhaps the most important decision reached in the New World. Everywhere in the western world of the 18th century, church and state were one; and everywhere the state maintained an established church and tried to force conformity to its dogma.

Whether history will judge this war to be different or not we cannot say. But this we can say with certainty: A government and a society that silences those who dissent is one that has lost its way.

America was born of revolt, flourished in dissent, became great through experimentation.

If our democracy is to flourish, it must have criticism; if our government is to function it must have dissent.