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We have seen the mere distinction of color made in the most enlightened period of time, a ground of the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man.

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
Made
Slavery
Men
Period
Time
Ground
Periods
Oppressive
Mere
Exercised
Color
Dominion
Seen
Enlightened
Ever
Distinction

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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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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 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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Knowledge will forever govern ignorance and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.
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Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
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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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The means of defence against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.
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In Europe, charters of liberty have been granted by Power. In America ... charters of power [are] granted by liberty.
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A standing army is one of the greatest mischief that can possibly happen.
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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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If man is not fit to govern himself, how can he be fit to govern someone else?
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The people are the only legitimate fountain of power, and it is from them that the constitutional charter, under which the several branches of government hold their power, is derived.
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A victorious and powerful ally is but another name for a master.
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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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Happily for the states, they enjoy the utmost freedom of religion. This freedom arises from that multiplicity of sects which pervades America, and which is the best and only security for religious liberty in any society.
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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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There never was an assembly of men, charged with a great and arduous trust, who were more pure in their motives, or more exclusively or anxiously devoted to the object committed to them.
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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] mere demarcation on parchment of the constitutional limits of the several departments is not a sufficient guard against those encroachments which lead to a tyrannical concentration of all the powers of government in the same hands.
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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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