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.
JAMES MADISONWar 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.
More James Madison Quotes
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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?
JAMES MADISON -
America was indebted to immigration for her settlement and prosperity.
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 -
I should not regret a fair and full trial of the entire abolition of capital punishment.
JAMES MADISON -
What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?
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.
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 -
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 -
All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.
JAMES MADISON -
A man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them.
JAMES MADISON -
Wherever there is interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done.
JAMES MADISON -
By rendering the labor of one, the property of the other, they cherish pride, luxury, and vanity on one side; on the other, vice and servility, or hatred and revolt.
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 -
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 -
As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed.
JAMES MADISON