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 MADISONThere 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 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 MADISONLet me recommend the best medicine in the world: a long journey, at a mild season, through a pleasant country, in easy stages.
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 MADISONI should not regret a fair and full trial of the entire abolition of capital punishment.
JAMES MADISONAmerica was indebted to immigration for her settlement and prosperity.
JAMES MADISONLiberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power.
JAMES MADISONThe means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.
JAMES MADISONThe rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted.
JAMES MADISONThe personal right to acquire property, which is a natural right, gives to property, when acquired, a right to protection, as a social right.
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 MADISONBy 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 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 MADISONWe are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.
JAMES MADISONAll men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.
JAMES MADISONIf 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