What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes in any new branch of commerce when he knows not that his plans may be rendered unlawful before they can be executed?
JAMES MADISONNo nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
More James Madison Quotes
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Any reading not of a vicious species must be a good substitute for the amusements too apt to fill up the leisure of the labouring classes.
JAMES MADISON -
I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.
JAMES MADISON -
By rendering the labor of one, the property of the other, they cherish pride, luxury, and vanity on one side; on the other, vice and servility, or hatred and revolt.
JAMES MADISON -
That part of America which had encouraged them most had advanced most rapidly in population, agriculture and the arts.
JAMES MADISON -
The internal effects of a mutable policy poisons the blessings of liberty itself.
JAMES MADISON -
No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
JAMES MADISON -
In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority.
JAMES MADISON -
All that seems indispensible in stating the account between the dead and the living, is to see that the debts against the latter do not exceed the advances made by the former.
JAMES MADISON -
What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?
JAMES MADISON -
It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.
JAMES MADISON -
Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.
JAMES MADISON -
If we are to take for the criterion of truth the majority of suffrages, they ought to be gotten from those philosophic and patriotic citizens who cultivate their reason.
JAMES MADISON -
A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.
JAMES MADISON -
A man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them.
JAMES MADISON -
War should only be declared by the authority of the people, whose toils and treasures are to support its burdens, instead of the government which is to reap its fruits.
JAMES MADISON -
The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.
JAMES MADISON -
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.
JAMES MADISON -
The rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted.
JAMES MADISON -
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.
JAMES MADISON -
To the press alone, chequered as it is with abuses, the world is indebted for all the triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.
JAMES MADISON -
The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.
JAMES MADISON -
Americans have the right and advantage of being armed – unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.
JAMES MADISON -
We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.
JAMES MADISON -
Let me recommend the best medicine in the world: a long journey, at a mild season, through a pleasant country, in easy stages.
JAMES MADISON -
In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
JAMES MADISON -
War contains so much folly, as well as wickedness, that much is to be hoped from the progress of reason.
JAMES MADISON