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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.

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
Country
Mental
Giving
Essentials
Diffusing
Service
Rendered
Blessing
Preservation
Liberty
Equally
Education
Enjoyment
Next
Improvement
Best
Essential

More quotes by James Madison

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In all the co-temporary discussions and comments, which the Constitution underwent, it was constantly justified and recommended on the ground, that the powers not given to the government, were withheld from it.
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[Exchange] the galling burden of bachelorship for the easy yoke of matrimony.
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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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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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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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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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Philosophy is common sense with big words.
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Wherever there is interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done.
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No government, any more than an individual, will long be respected without being truly respectable nor be truly respectable, without possessing a certain portion of order and stability.
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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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[I]t is the reason alone, of the public, that ought to control and regulate the government.
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Our opinions agree as to the evil, moral, political, and economical, of slavery.
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Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
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It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage...Before any man can be considered as a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governor of the Universe.
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[The proposed establishment] will have a . . . tendency to banish our Citizens. . . . To superadd a fresh motive to emigration by revoking the liberty which they now enjoy, would be the same species of folly which has dishonoured and depopulated flourishing kingdoms.
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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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Procrastination in the beginning and precipitation towards the conclusion is the characteristic of such bodies.
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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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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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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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