All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.
JAMES MADISONA well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.
More James Madison Quotes
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The operations of the federal government will be most extensive and important in times of war and danger; those of the state governments, in times of peace and security.
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The Constitution preserves the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation where the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.
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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.
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The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries.
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Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
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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.
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It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.
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Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power.
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I should not regret a fair and full trial of the entire abolition of capital punishment.
JAMES MADISON -
We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.
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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.
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The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.
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And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.
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The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.
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Whenever a youth is ascertained to possess talents meriting an education which his parents cannot afford, he should be carried forward at the public expense.
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Every nation whose affairs betray a want of wisdom and stability may calculate on every loss which can be sustained from the more systematic policy of its wiser neighbors.
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What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual and surest support?
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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.
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Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.
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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.
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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.
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Union of religious sentiments begets a surprising confidence.
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No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
JAMES MADISON -
That part of America which had encouraged them most had advanced most rapidly in population, agriculture and the arts.
JAMES MADISON -
A sincere and steadfast co-operation in promoting such a reconstruction of our political system as would provide for the permanent liberty and happiness of the United States.
JAMES MADISON -
Learned Institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people.
JAMES MADISON