The number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the state.
JAMES MADISONIt 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.
More James Madison Quotes
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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 -
Wherever there is interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done.
JAMES MADISON -
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 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 -
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
JAMES MADISON -
Philosophy is common sense with big words.
JAMES MADISON -
Commercial shackles are generally unjust, oppressive, and impolitic.
JAMES MADISON -
If men were angels, no government would be necessary.
JAMES MADISON -
America was indebted to immigration for her settlement and prosperity.
JAMES MADISON -
They throw that light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty and dangerous encroachments on the public liberty.
JAMES MADISON -
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 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 -
The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.
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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 -
There is no maxim, in my opinion, which is more liable to be misapplied, and which, therefore, more needs elucidation, than the current one, that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong.
JAMES MADISON -
As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed.
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 -
The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.
JAMES MADISON -
As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.
JAMES MADISON -
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 -
To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.
JAMES MADISON -
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.
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 -
Despotism can only exist in darkness, and there are too many lights now in the political firmament to permit it to remain anywhere, as it has heretofore done, almost everywhere.
JAMES MADISON -
The personal right to acquire property, which is a natural right, gives to property, when acquired, a right to protection, as a social right.
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