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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.

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
Law
Execute
Fact
Legislature
Facts
Stamps
Makes
Intended
Character
Department
Judiciary
Never
Proper
Refusing
Final
Paramount
Finals
Stamp

More quotes by James Madison

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Those who proposed the Constitution knew, and those who ratified the Constitution also knew that this is...a limited government tied down to specified powers....It was never supposed or suspected that the old Congress could give away the money of the states to encourage agriculture or for any other purpose they pleased.
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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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Public opinion sets bounds to every government, and is the real sovereign in every free one.
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All power in human hands is liable to be abused.
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I hope this will find you...enjoying the commencement of a new year with every prospect that can make it a happy one.
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The capacity of the female mind for studies of the highest order cannot be doubted, having been sufficiently illustrated by its works of genius, of erudition, and of science.
James Madison
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I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.
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A standing army is one of the greatest mischief that can possibly happen.
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I am unable to conceive that the state legislatures which must feel so many motives to watch, and which possess so many means of counteracting the federal legislature, would fail either to detect or to defeat a conspiracy of the latter against the liberties of their common constituencies.
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An efficient militia is authorized and contemplated by the Constitution and required by the spirit and safety of free government.
James Madison
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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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By rendering the labor of one, the property of the other, they cherish pride, luxury, and vanity on one side on the other, vice and servility, or hatred and revolt.
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If man is not fit to govern himself, how can he be fit to govern someone else?
James Madison
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[Exchange] the galling burden of bachelorship for the easy yoke of matrimony.
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If we are to take for the criterion of truth the majority of suffrages, they ought to be gotten from those philosophic and patriotic citizens who cultivate their reason.
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The future and success of America is not in this Constitution, but in the laws of God upon which this Constitution is founded.
James Madison
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The political truths declared in that solemn manner acquire by degrees the character of fundamental maxims of free Government, and as they become incorporated with national sentiment, counteract the impulses of interest and passion.
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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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A just security to property is not afforded by that government, under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species.
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We have the self-evident right to regulate our trade according to our own will and our own interest . . . . This right can be denied to no independent nation.
James Madison