I don't deny that religion is very healthful to a lot of people. And as long as they don't try to convert me, I have, you know, nothing - and to interfere with the rights of people to believe other religions or to not believe in any religion at all - as long as they mind their own religion - perfectly all right with me...

Americans are in serious intellectual trouble - in danger of losing our hard-won cultural capital to a virulent mixture of anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism and low expectations.

Throughout the three decades preceding the Civil War, the anticlerical ethos of the radical abolitionists was used against them by religious opponents of emancipation, who . . . even described abolitionism itself as an atheist plot.

I think very few people realize how much the separation of church and state has to do with the fact that Americans are not only more religious than a lot of other people in the world but that conversions are much more common here.

The government should not be in the business of funneling money for social services through any faith-based organization

For one thing, the Catholic Church in particular has this one thing - confession - in which you could go, confess to a priest and obtain absolution of your sins. And there was a routine and a ritual and I think - I think that it did help.

I don't see why any president has to talk about his belief in God.