American Quotations by William J. Federer 2024

George Bernard Shaw (July 26, 1856-November 2, 1950) was an acclaimed British dramatist, novelist and critic, who became popular for his satirical attacks on the conventions of his day. He wrote more than 40 plays, and in 1925 won the Nobel prize for literature. George Bernard Shaw helped found the Fabian Society, became an active socialist, and spent many years of his life promoting socialism. In an article he wrote later in life, titled "Too True to be Good," George Bernard Shaw wrote: <The science to which I pinned my faith is bankrupt. Its counsels, which should have established the millennium,...

United States Congress (May 1854) in the Thirty-Fourth Congress assembled, Nathaniel P. Banks of Massachusetts being Speaker of the House, passed a resolution in the House which declared: <Whereas, The people of these United States, from their earliest history to the present time, have been led by the hand of a kind Providence, and are indebted for the countless blessings of the past and present, and dependent for continued prosperity in the future upon Almighty God; and whereas the great vital and conservative element in our system is the belief of our people in the pure doctrines and divine truths...

United States Congress (March 27, 1854) received the report of Mr. Meacham of the House Committee on the Judiciary: <"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." Does our present practice violate that article? What is an establishment of religion? It must have a creed, defining what a man must believe; it must have rites and ordinances, which believers must observe; it must have ministers of defined qualifications, to teach the doctrines and administer the rites; it must have tests for the submissive and penalties for the non-conformist. There never was as established religion without all these. Is there...

Maine State Court (1854) in the case of Donahue v. Richards, 38 Me. 398 (Me. 1854), stated: <The common schools are not for the purpose of instruction in the theological doctrines of any religion or of any sect....No interference, by way of instruction, with the views of the scholars, whether derived from parental or sacerdotal authority, is shown. The Bible was used merely as a book in which instruction in reading was given. But reading the Bible is no more an interference with religious belief than would reading the mythology of Greece or Rome be regarded as interfering with religious belief...

United States Congress (January 19, 1853) as part of a Congressional investigation, records the report of Mr. Badger of the Senate Judiciary Committee: <The [First Amendment] clause speaks of "an establishment of religion." What is meant by that expression? It referred, without doubt, to that establishment which existed in the mother-country, and its meaning is to be ascertained by ascertaining what that establishment was. It was the connection, with the state, of a particular religious society, by its endowment at the public expense, in exclusion of, or in preference to, any other, by giving to its members exclusive political rights, and...