The happy Union of these States is a wonder; their Constitution a miracle; their example the hope of Liberty throughout the world.
JAMES MADISONUnion of religious sentiments begets a surprising confidence.
More James Madison Quotes
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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 -
A pure democracy is a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person.
JAMES MADISON -
If men were angels, no government would be necessary.
JAMES MADISON -
Learned Institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people.
JAMES MADISON -
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 -
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 MADISON -
That part of America which had encouraged them most had advanced most rapidly in population, agriculture and the arts.
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 -
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 -
Each generation should be made to bear the burden of its own wars, instead of carrying them on, at the expense of other generations.
JAMES MADISON -
It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.
JAMES MADISON -
And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.
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 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 -
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 -
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 -
Commercial shackles are generally unjust, oppressive, and impolitic.
JAMES MADISON -
Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power.
JAMES MADISON -
The 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 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 -
Philosophy is common sense with big words.
JAMES MADISON -
The capacity of the female mind for studies of the highest order cannot be doubted, having been sufficiently illustrated by its works of genius, of erudition, and of science.
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 internal effects of a mutable policy poisons the blessings of liberty itself.
JAMES MADISON -
Whenever a youth is ascertained to possess talents meriting an education which his parents cannot afford, he should be carried forward at the public expense.
JAMES MADISON -
I should not regret a fair and full trial of the entire abolition of capital punishment.
JAMES MADISON