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 MADISONPhilosophy is common sense with big words.
More James Madison Quotes
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Each generation should be made to bear the burden of its own wars, instead of carrying them on, at the expense of other generations.
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As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.
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The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.
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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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The class of citizens who provide at once their own food and their own raiment, may be viewed as the most truly independent and happy.
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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.
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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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They throw that light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty and dangerous encroachments on the public liberty.
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Philosophy is common sense with big words.
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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 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.
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War contains so much folly, as well as wickedness, that much is to be hoped from the progress of reason.
JAMES MADISON