I never was in the Nation of Islam... I mean, what I call myself is a natural Muslim, 'cause it's just me and God. You know, going to the mosque, the ritual and the tradition, it's just not in me to do. So I don't do it.
I don't walk around with a bible or preach to people and I don't want to disturb my team-mates on match days by praying in the dressing room, so I do that at the hotel before I leave. I respect their way of life and do not insist that my way is best. I have not tried to convert anybody.
You cannot drag a man's conscience before any tribunal, and no one is answerable for his religious opinions to any power on earth.
It is a fundamental human right, a privilege of nature, that every man should worship according to his own convictions.
Live and let live, believe and let believe. 'Twas said the lesser gods were only traits Of the one awful God. Just so the saints Are God's white light refracted into colors.
My view is my view. Your view is your view.
No two persons think alike, even if they outwardly profess the same faith, so we have as many religions in Christianity as we have believers.
I speak not of men's creeds—they rest between Man and his Maker.
People of faith should not invoke the power of the state to decide what everyone can believe or think or read or do. In such cases, like abortion or prayer or prohibition or sexual identity, the proper role of religion is to appeal to the free conscience of each person, not the coercive rule of secular law.
Each person must discover his own philosophy of life, and it is not fair or right to impose our codes upon others. It is also our responsibility, however, to share, one with another, such experiences as may have common value.
What sort of philosophy one chooses depends, therefore, on what sort of man one is; for a philosophical system is not a dead piece of furniture that we can reject or accept as we wish; it is rather a thing animated by the soul of the person who holds it.
It is true that many Americans find the Commandments in accord with their personal beliefs. But we do not count heads before enforcing the First Amendment.
People have an absolute right to believe what they want to believe and to say what they want to say, and churches have an absolute protection to preach and do and not do whatever they choose to do within their houses of worship. But nondiscrimination laws apply to the commercial marketplace and they do protect all of us.
As a matter of principle, humanity is precarious: each person can only believe what he recognizes to be true internally and, at the same time, nobody thinks or makes up his mind without already being caught up in certain relationships with others, which leads him to opt for a particular set of opinions.
Every hen thinks she has laid the best egg! Can we not all believe as we choose? But the choice of others - what is that to us? Let them alone.
There are five billion human beings and in a certain way I think we need five billion different religions.
If the man doesn't believe as we do, we say he is a crank, and that settles it. I mean, it does nowadays, because now we can't burn him.
The village atheist has the right to be heard; he has no right to be heeded. While he has a right not to have his own children indoctrinated in what he believes are false and foolish teachings, he has no right to dictate what other children may be taught.
Each person can think what they want.
McCarthy generally, as an individual, was a liberal. He was, in economic philosophy and a lot of other things, extremely liberal.
We should not allow our personal values to erode, even if others think we are peculiar.
Stands must be taken. If I am to respect myself I have to search myself for what I believe is right and take a stand on what I find. Otherwise, I have not gathered together what I have been given; I have not embraced what I have learned; I lack my own conviction.
When our beliefs are based on our own direct experience of reality and not on notions offered by others, no one can remove these beliefs from us.
Religion should be about your relationship with God, not what the church says you can and can't do.
Human rights, of course, must include the right to religious freedom, understood as the expression of a dimension that is at once individual and communitarian - a vision that brings out the unity of the person while clearly distinguishing between the dimension of the citizen and that of the believer.
