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The purpose of the Constitution is to restrict the majority's ability to harm a minority.

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
Constitution
Ability
Purpose
Restrict
Minority
Minorities
Harm
Majority

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The most productive system of finance will always be the least burdensome.
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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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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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In the first place, it is to be remembered, that the general government is not to be charged with the whole power of making and administering laws. Its jurisdiction is limited to certain enumerated objects, which concern all the members of the republic, but which are not to be attained by the separate provisions of any.
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That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest.
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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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No free country has ever been without Parties, which are a natural offspring of freedom.
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I acknowledge, in the ordinary course of government, that the exposition of the laws and Constitution devolves upon the judicial. But I beg to know upon what principle it can be contended that any one department draws from the Constitution greater powers than another in marking out the limits of the powers of the several departments.
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Disarm the people- that is the best and most effective way to enslave them.
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In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority.
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Is there a Legislative power in fact, not expressly prohibited by the Constitution, which might not, according to the doctrine of the Court, be exercised as a means of carrying into effect some specified Power?
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Our Constitution represents the work of the finger of Almighty God.
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But the mild voice of reason, pleading the cause of an enlarged and permanent interest, is but too often drowned, before public bodies as well as individuals, by the clamors of an impatient avidity for immediate and immoderate gain.
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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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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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A public debt is a public curse.
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[In a democracy] a common passion or interest will, in almost every case , be felt by a majority of the whole a communication and concert results from the form of government itself and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual.
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The appointment of senators by the state legislatures . . . is recommended by the double advantage of favoring a select appointment, and of giving to the state governments such an agency in the formation of the federal government, as must secure the authority of the former.
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The number of individuals employed under the Constitution of the United States will be much smaller than the number employed under the particular States.
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What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?
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