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" 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

Purpose

Soil

Separation

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" The internal effects of a mutable policy poisons the blessings of liberty itself. "

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

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

" 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. "

" To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect. "

" 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. "

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

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

" Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

" The personal right to acquire property, which is a natural right, gives to property, when acquired, a right to protection, as a social right. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

" The rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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