Henry David Thoreau Quotes

We are afraid to face the hard questions. We are willing to tackle drugs, crime, and public education only if it doesn't cost us any new taxes.

No money of the state shall ever be given or appropriated to any sectarian or religious society or institution.

Whatever help the nation can justly afford should be generously given to aid the States in supporting common schools; but it would be unjust to our people and dangerous to our institutions to apply any portion of the revenues of the nation or of the States to the support of sectarian schools.

The less that is applied to education, the less they [the people] will have to pay in taxation

[I]t would be unjust to our people and dangerous to our institutions to apply any portion of revenues of the nation or of the States to the support of sectarian schools.

Nobody wants to pay higher taxes. But do you want your kids to get a good education? You have to pay for that. Do you want Medicare for senior citizens? I do. We have to pay for it.

Spending an extra dollar on the D.C. public school system isn't spending an extra dollar on education. Spending an extra dollar with the Pentagon doesn't buy you an extra dollar on defense. Republicans need to look skeptically at military spending.

Pell Grants open a lot of doors, but they rely on a solvent government.

Arnold Schwarzenegger cut teacher's salaries and parks and libraries rather than raise taxes for the many California millionaires and billionaires.

Female schools might be comprised in the list of those worthy the public patronage, with great propriety.

If it is the duty of the State to educate, it is the duty of the State also to bear the burden of education, namely, the taxation out of which education is provided.

The applicability of the Establishment Clause to public funding of benefits to religious schools was settled in Everson v. Board of Ed. of Ewing, which inaugurated the modern era of establishment doctrine.

Can we understand - just for the record, we do need the government for a lot of big ticket items.

The government must pursue a course of complete neutrality toward religion.

There is no escape from the cost of public needs.

We early freed ourselves from the incubus of a State Church.

The public schools are supported entirely, in most communities, by public funds—funds exacted not only from parents, nor alone from those who hold particular religious views, nor indeed from those who subscribe to any creed at all.

There is no neutral aid when that aid principally flows to religious institutions nor is there truly “private choice” when the available choices resulting from the program are predominantly religious.

Zealous groups threaten to infringe civil liberties when they seek government support to impose their own religious views on non-adherents. This has taken many forms, including attempts to introduce organized prayer in public schools, to outlaw birth control and abortion, and to use public tax revenues to finance religious schools.

I do not believe that any type of religion should ever be introduced into the public schools of the United States.

No sectarian tenets shall ever be taught in any school supported in whole or in part by the State, nations, or by the proceeds of any tax levied upon any community.

The nation was very little accustomed at that time [1625] to the burden of taxes, and had never opened their purses in any degree for supporting their sovereign.

We have taxes so we can educate our kids, take care of our elderly.

I am opposed to the Federal Government spending any money to sustain church schools ….

The civil Government, though bereft of everything like an associated hierarchy, possesses the requisite stability, and performs its functions with complete success, whilst the number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people, have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the State