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 MADISONAnd 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.
More James Madison Quotes
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The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.
JAMES MADISON -
The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries.
JAMES MADISON -
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 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 -
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 -
Commercial shackles are generally unjust, oppressive, and impolitic.
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 -
A pure democracy is a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person.
JAMES MADISON -
Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.
JAMES MADISON -
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.
JAMES MADISON -
The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.
JAMES MADISON -
I have no doubt but that the misery of the lower classes will be found to abate whenever the Government assumes a freer aspect and the laws favor a subdivision of Property.
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 -
The number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the state.
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