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" 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. "

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" 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

Other

Generation

Bear

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

" 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. "

" Let me recommend the best medicine in the world: a long journey, at a mild season, through a pleasant country, in easy stages. "

James Madison

Journey

Long

" The circulation of confidence is better than the circulation of money. "

" Religion flourishes in greater purity, without than with the aid of Government. "

" 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

Liberty

Learning

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

" Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions. "

" 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? "

" The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war. "

" 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. "

" No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. "

" Wherever there is interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done. "

" 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. "

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

" The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse. "

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

" 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

Opinion

Political

" 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. "

" 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. "

" We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties. "

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

" Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power. "

" War 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. "

" The class of citizens who provide at once their own food and their own raiment, may be viewed as the most truly independent and happy. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to an uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. "