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Stability in government is essential to national character and to the advantages annexed to it, as well as to that repose and confidence in the minds of the people, which are among the chief blessings of civil society.

James Madison

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James Madison
Age: 85 †
Born: 1751
Born: March 16
Died: 1836
Died: June 28
4Th U.S. President
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James Madison
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More quotes by James Madison

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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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Every answer he [President John Adams] gives to his addressers unmasks more and more his principles and views. His language to the young men at Philadelphia is the most abominable and degrading that could fall from the lips of the first magistrate of an independent people, and particularly from a Revolutionary patriot.
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The best service that can be rendered to a Country, next to that of giving it liberty, is in diffusing the mental improvement equally essential to the preservation, and the enjoyment of the blessing.
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We have seen that the tendency of republican governments is to an aggrandizement of the legislative at the expense of the other departments. The appeals to the people, therefore, would usually be made by the executive and judiciary departments.
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It is vain to say that enlightened statesmen will always be able to adjust their interests. Enlightened men will not always be at the helm.
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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.
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It is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity toward each other.
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THE Constitution proposed by the convention may be considered under two general points of view. The FIRST relates to the sum or quantity of power which it vests in the government, including the restraints imposed on the States. The SECOND, to the particular structure of the government, and the distribution of this power among its branches.
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We may be assured by past experience, that such a practice [as some states charging high taxes on goods from other states] would be introduced by future contrivances and both by that and a common knowledge of human affairs, that it would nourish unceasing animosities, and not improbably terminate in serious interruptions of the public tranquility.
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In a free government the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights.
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Temporary deviations from fundamental principles are always more or less dangerous. When the first pretext fails, those who become interested in prolonging the evil will rarely be at a loss for other pretexts.
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Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society.
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Disarm the people- that is the best and most effective way to enslave them.
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No power over the freedom of religion [is] delegated to the United States by the Constitution.
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Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act. In this relation, then, the new Constitution will, if established, be a FEDERAL, and not a NATIONAL constitution.
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As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.
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The purpose of the Constitution is to restrict the majority's ability to harm a minority.
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I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.
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I wish not to be regarded as an advocate for the particular organizations of the several state governments . . . they carry strong marks of the haste, and still stronger marks of the inexperience, under which they were framed.
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Commercial shackles are generally unjust, oppressive, and impolitic.
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