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 MADISONThe diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to an uniformity of interests.
More James Madison Quotes
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The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.
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The protection of these faculties is the first object of government.
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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.
JAMES MADISON -
To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.
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Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power.
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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 -
Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.
JAMES MADISON -
What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?
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In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority.
JAMES MADISON -
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.
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 -
The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to an uniformity of interests.
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 -
A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained in arms, is the best most natural defense of a free country.
JAMES MADISON -
A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce, or a tragedy, or perhaps both.
JAMES MADISON -
Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.
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A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.
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The rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted.
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I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution.
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 -
That part of America which had encouraged them most had advanced most rapidly in population, agriculture and the arts.
JAMES MADISON -
The people are the only legitimate fountain of power, and it is from them that the constitutional charter, under which the several branches of government hold their power, is derived.
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I should not regret a fair and full trial of the entire abolition of capital punishment.
JAMES MADISON -
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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All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.
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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.
JAMES MADISON