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 MADISONThe internal effects of a mutable policy poisons the blessings of liberty itself.
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.
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We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.
JAMES MADISON -
Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power.
JAMES MADISON -
Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.
JAMES MADISON -
The internal effects of a mutable policy poisons the blessings of liberty itself.
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 -
I should not regret a fair and full trial of the entire abolition of capital punishment.
JAMES MADISON -
A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.
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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.
JAMES MADISON -
In no instance have… the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people.
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.
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 -
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 -
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 -
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






