Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.
JAMES MADISONKnowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.
JAMES MADISONThe 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 MADISONThe 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 MADISONIn framing a government which is to be administered by men over men you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
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.
JAMES MADISONA man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them.
JAMES MADISONThe executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war.
JAMES MADISONAny 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 MADISONWherever there is interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done.
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.
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.
JAMES MADISONA 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 MADISONWar contains so much folly, as well as wickedness, that much is to be hoped from the progress of reason.
JAMES MADISONReligious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.
JAMES MADISONThe truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.
JAMES MADISONReligion flourishes in greater purity, without than with the aid of Government.
JAMES MADISON