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All Quotes by author - James Madison

" All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree. "

" All that seems indispensible in stating the account between the dead and the living, is to see that the debts against the latter do not exceed the advances made by the former. "

" A man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them. "

" Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. "

" 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. "

" America was indebted to immigration for her settlement and prosperity. That part of America which had encouraged them most had advanced most rapidly in population, agriculture and the arts. "

" 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. "

" Any 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. "

" 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. "

" A pure democracy is a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person. "

" As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights. "

" A sincere and steadfast co-operation in promoting such a reconstruction of our political system as would provide for the permanent liberty and happiness of the United States. "

" As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. "

" A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people. "

" A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained in arms, is the best most natural defense of a free country. "

" 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. "

" Commercial shackles are generally unjust, oppressive, and impolitic. "

" 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. "

" Each generation should be made to bear the burden of its own wars, instead of carrying them on, at the expense of other generations. "

" Every nation whose affairs betray a want of wisdom and stability may calculate on every loss which can be sustained from the more systematic policy of its wiser neighbors. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" If men were angels, no government would be necessary. "

" If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" In 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. "

" In no instance have... the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people. "

" In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority. "

" I should not regret a fair and full trial of the entire abolition of capital punishment. "

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