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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.
James Madison
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James Madison
Age: 85 †
Born: 1751
Born: March 16
Died: 1836
Died: June 28
4Th U.S. President
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Port Conway
Virginia
James Madison
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President Madison
J. Madison
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More quotes by James Madison
I go on the principle that a public debt is a public curse and in a republican government more than in any other.
James Madison
I am unable to conceive that the state legislatures which must feel so many motives to watch, and which possess so many means of counteracting the federal legislature, would fail either to detect or to defeat a conspiracy of the latter against the liberties of their common constituencies.
James Madison
[The public has] the habit now of invalidating opinions emanating from me by reference to my age and infirmities.
James Madison
The power of taxing people and their property is essential to the very existence of government.
James Madison
The temple through which alone lies the road to that of Liberty.
James Madison
Our country, if it does justice to itself, will be the workshop of liberty to the civilized world.
James Madison
Wherever there is interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done.
James Madison
There is not a shadow of right in the general government to intermingle with religion. Its least interference with it would be a most flagrant usurpation.
James Madison
Experience has instructed us that no skill in the science of government has yet been able to discriminate and define, with sufficient certainty, its three great provinces the legislative, executive, and judiciary or even the privileges and powers of the different legislative branches.
James Madison
Measures should be enacted which, without violating the rights of property, would reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity, and raise extreme indigence towards a state of comfort.
James Madison
Our opinions agree as to the evil, moral, political, and economical, of slavery.
James Madison
Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression.
James Madison
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
In the extent and proper structure of the Union, therefore, we behold a republican remedy for the disease incident to republican government.
James Madison
If men were angels, there would be no need of government.
James Madison
America united with a handful of troops, or without a single soldier, exhibits a more forbidding posture to foreign ambition than America disunited, with a hundred thousand veterans ready for combat.
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
In all the co-temporary discussions and comments, which the Constitution underwent, it was constantly justified and recommended on the ground, that the powers not given to the government, were withheld from it.
James Madison
The purpose of the Constitution is to restrict the majority's ability to harm a minority.
James Madison
The governments of Europe are afraid to trust the people with arms. If they did, the people would certainly shake off the yoke of tyranny, as America did.
James Madison
