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

James Madison

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James Madison
Age: 85 †
Born: 1751
Born: March 16
Died: 1836
Died: June 28
4Th U.S. President
Diplomat
Lawyer
Philosopher
Politician
Slaveholder
Statesperson
Writer
Port Conway
Virginia
James Madison
Jr.
President Madison
J. Madison
Madison
Body
Composed
Best
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Defense
Well
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Country
Arms
People
Liberty
Regulated
Free
Natural
Militia

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The number of individuals employed under the Constitution of the United States will be much smaller than the number employed under the particular States.
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That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest.
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Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression.
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At cheaper and nearer seats of Learning parents with slender incomes may place their sons in a course of education putting them on a level with the sons of the Richest.
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The invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the Constituents.
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Democracies have been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property and in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death.
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Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power.
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How a regulation so unjust in itself, so foreign to the authority of Congress, and so hurtful to the sale of public land, and smelling so strongly of an antiquated bigotry, could have received the countenance of a committee is truly a matter of astonishment.
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In all great changes of established governments, forms ought to give way to substance
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What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.
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There never was an assembly of men, charged with a great and arduous trust, who were more pure in their motives, or more exclusively or anxiously devoted to the object committed to them.
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A standing army is one of the greatest mischief that can possibly happen.
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No distinction seems to be more obvious than that between spiritual and temporal matters. Yet whenever they have been made objects of Legislation, they have clashed and contended with each other, till one or the other has gained the supremacy.
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The people shall not be restrained from peacefully assembling and consulting for their common good, nor from applying to the legislature by petitions, or remonstrances for redress of their grievances.
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The great desideratum in Government is, so to modify the sovereignty as that it may be sufficiently neutral between different parts of the Society to controul one part from invading the rights of another, and at the same time sufficiently controuled itself, from setting up an interest adverse to that of the entire Society.
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Our country, if it does justice to itself, will be the workshop of liberty to the civilized world.
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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.
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The religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate.
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