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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.

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
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Port Conway
Virginia
James Madison
Jr.
President Madison
J. Madison
Madison
Reading
Substitute
Must
Vicious
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Substitutes
Classes
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Fill
Labouring
Species
Amusements
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Amusement

More quotes by James Madison

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I have ever regarded the freedom of religious opinions and worship as equally belonging to every sect.
James Madison
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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.
James Madison
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The American people are too well schooled in the duty and practice of submitting to the will of the majority to permit any serious uneasiness on that account
James Madison
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Another advantage accruing from this ingredient in the constitution of a senate, is the additional impediment it must prove against improper acts of legislation. No law or resolution can now be passed without the concurrence first of a majority of the people, and then of a majority of the states.
James Madison
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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.
James Madison
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How could a readiness for war in time of peace be safely prohibited, unless we could prohibit, in like manner, the preparations and establishments of every hostile nation?
James Madison
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The American people owe it to themselves, and to the cause of free Government, to prove by their establishments for the advancement and diffusion of knowledge, that their political Institutionsare as favorable to the intellectual and moral improvement of Man as they are conformable to his individual and social rights.
James Madison
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Union of religious sentiments begets a surprising confidence.
James Madison
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We've staked our future on our ability to follow the Ten Commandments with all our heart.
James Madison
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Those who proposed the Constitution knew, and those who ratified the Constitution also knew that this is...a limited government tied down to specified powers....It was never supposed or suspected that the old Congress could give away the money of the states to encourage agriculture or for any other purpose they pleased.
James Madison
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Power is of an encroaching nature.
James Madison
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Every new and successful example of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters is of importance.
James Madison
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Among the numerous advantages promised by a well-constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction.
James Madison
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Whilst the last members were signing it Doctr. Franklin looking towards the Presidents chair, at the back of which a rising sun happened to be painted, observed to a few members near him, that Painters had found it difficult to distinguish in their art a rising from a setting sun.
James Madison
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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.
James Madison
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But the mild voice of reason, pleading the cause of an enlarged and permanent interest, is but too often drowned, before public bodies as well as individuals, by the clamors of an impatient avidity for immediate and immoderate gain.
James Madison
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Commercial shackles are generally unjust, oppressive, and impolitic.
James Madison
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At first view it might seem not to square with the republican theory, to suppose either that a majority have not the right, or that a minority will have the force to subvert a government . . . . But theoretic reasoning in this, as in most other cases, must be qualified by the lessons of practice.
James Madison
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The temple through which alone lies the road to that of Liberty.
James Madison
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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