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Learned Institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people. They throw that light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty and dangerous encroachments on the public liberty.

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
Mind
Security
Crafty
People
Liberty
Throw
Public
Favorite
Education
Institutions
Free
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Light
Ought
Best
Learned
Encroachments
Every
Dangerous
Encroachment

More quotes by James Madison

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Resistance to tyranny is service to God.
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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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[Property] embraces everything to which a man may attach a value and have a right.
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The nation which reposes on the pillow of political confidence, will sooner or later end its political existence in a deadly lethargy.
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[Exchange] the galling burden of bachelorship for the easy yoke of matrimony.
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With respect to the words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.
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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.
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The purpose of the Constitution is to restrict the majority's ability to harm a minority.
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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.
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No man can be a competent legislator who does not add to an upright intention and a sound judgment a certain degree of knowledge of the subject on which he is to legislate.
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Nothing could be more irrational than to give the people power, and to withhold from them information without which power is abused.
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... the State Legislatures will jealously and closely watch the operations of this Government, and be able to resist with more effect every assumption of power, than any other power on earth can do and the greatest opponents to a Federal Government admit the State Legislatures to be sure guardians of the people's liberty.
James Madison
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On any other hypothesis, the delegation of judicial power would annul the authority delegating it and the concurrence of this department with the others in usurped powers, might subvert forever, and beyond the possible reach of any rightful remedy, the very Constitution which all were instituted to preserve.
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Nothing has yet been offered to invalidate the doctrine that the meaning of the Constitution may as well be ascertained by the Legislative as by the Judicial authority.
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I do not conceive that power is given to the President and Senate to dismember the empire, or to alienate any great, essential right. I do not think the whole legislative authority have this power. The exercise of the power must be consistent with the object of the delegation.
James Madison
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The better proof of reverence for that holy name would be not to profane it by making it a topic of legislative discussion.
James Madison
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History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and it's issuance.
James Madison
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Having outlived so many of my contemporaries, I ought not to forget that I may be thought to have outlived myself.
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[R]efusing or not refusing to execute a law to stamp it with its final character . . . makes the Judiciary department paramount in fact to the Legislature, which was never intended and can never be proper.
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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?
James Madison