STORY, Joseph Quotes
(1779-1845), Associate Justice U. S. Supreme Court
There is not a truth to be gathered from history more certain, or more momentous, than this: that civil liberty cannot long be separated from religious liberty without danger, and ultimately without destruction to both. Wherever religious liberty exists, it will, first or last, bring in and establish political liberty. Wherever it is suppressed, the church establishment will, first or last, become the engine of despotism, and overthrow, unless it be itself overthrown, every vestige of political right.
How it is possible to imagine that a religion breathing the spirit of mercy and benevolence, teaching the forgiveness of injuries, the exercise of charity, and the return of good for evil, can be so perverted as to breathe the spirit of slaughter and persecution, of discord and vengeance, for differences of opinion, is a most unaccountable and extraordinary phenomenon. Still more extraordinary, that it should be the doctrine, not of base and wicked men merely, seeking to cover up their own misdeeds, but of good men, seeking the way of salvation with uprightness of heart and purpose. It affords a melancholy proof of the infirmity of human judgment, and teaches a lesson of humility from which spiritual pride may learn meekness, and spiritual zeal a moderating wisdom.
Human wisdom is the aggregate of all human experience, constantly accumulating, selecting, and reorganizing its own materials.
It is only the nature of their education that puts a woman at such disadvantage, and keeps up the notion that they are our inferiors in ability.—The best sources of knowledge are shut off from them, and the surprise is that they manage to keep so abreast of us as they do.
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