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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.

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
Nation
Betray
Policy
Wiser
Liberty
Affairs
Wisdom
Stability
Calculate
Nations
Affair
Sustained
May
Neighbor
Systematic
Every
Whose
Betrayed
Loss
Neighbors

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If this spirit shall ever be so far debased, as to tolerate a law not obligatory on the legislature, as well as on the people, the people will be prepared to tolerate any thing but liberty.
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We look back, already, with astonishment, at the daring outrages committed by despotism, on the reason and rights of man we look forward with joy, to the period, when it shall be despoiled of all its usurpations, and bound forever in the chains, with which it had loaded its miserable victims.
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Resolved, That the General Assembly of Virginia, doth unequivocally express a firm resolution to maintain and defend the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution of this State, against every aggression either foreign or domestic, and that they will support the Government of the United States in all measures warranted by the former.
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The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of Government. But what is Government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?
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I own myself the friend to a very free system of commerce, and hold it as a truth, that commercial shackles are generally unjust, oppressive and impolitic.
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A distinction of property results from that very protection which a free Government gives to unequal faculties of acquiring it.
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The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic are: first, the delegation of the government, in the latter,to a small number of citizens elected by the rest secondly, the greater number of citizens and greater sphere of country over which the latter may be extended.
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It was by the sober sense of our citizens that we were safely and steadily conducted from monarchy to republicanism, and it is by the same agency alone we can be kept from falling back.
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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.
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The advice nearest to my heart and deepest in my convictions is that the Union of the States be cherished and perpetuated.
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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.
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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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A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
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The purpose of the Constitution is to restrict the majority's ability to harm a minority.
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What a perversion of the normal order of things! ... to make power the primary and central object of the social system, and Liberty but its satellite.
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Whenever a youth is ascertained to possess talents meriting an education which his parents cannot afford, he should be carried forward at the public expense.
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If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare... they may appoint teachers in every state... The powers of Congress would subvert the very foundation, the very nature of the limited government established by the people of America.
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There is not a more important and fundamental principle in legislation, than that the ways and means ought always to face the public engagements that our appropriations should ever go hand in hand with our promises.
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I go on the principle that a public debt is a public curse and in a republican government more than in any other.
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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.
James Madison