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

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And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.
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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.
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I should not regret a fair and full trial of the entire abolition of capital punishment.
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The strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast ambition, avarice, vanity, the honorable or venal love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace.
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A certain degree of preparation for war . . . affords also the best security for the continuance of peace.
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[In government] the constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other-that the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel over the public rights.
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The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war.
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Every new and successful example of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters is of importance.
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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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As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self-love, his opinions and passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other, and the former will be objects to which the latter attach themselves.
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If man is not fit to govern himself, how can he be fit to govern someone else?
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America was indebted to immigration for her settlement and prosperity. That part of America which had encouraged them most had advanced most rapidly in population, agriculture and the arts.
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That diabolical Hell conceived principle of persecution rages amoung some and to their eternal Infamy the Clergy can furnish their Quota of Imps for such business.
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Power is of an encroaching nature.
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For the same reason that the members of the State legislatures will be unlikely to attach themselves sufficiently to national objects, the members of the federal legislature will be likely to attach themselves too much to local objects.
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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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Oppressors can tyrannize only when they achieve a standing army, an enslaved press, and a disarmed populace.
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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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Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
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Who are to be the objects of popular choice? Every citizen whose merit may recommend him to the esteem and confidence of his country.
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