James Madison

“To the press alone, chequered as it is with abuses, the world is indebted for all the triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.”

“Let me recommend the best medicine in the world: a long journey, at a mild season, through a pleasant country, in easy stages.”

“A man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them.”

“A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce, or a tragedy, or perhaps both.”

“Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power.”

“The Constitution preserves the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation where the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.”

“Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.”

“The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to an uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government.”

“The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.”

“A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.”

“A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained in arms, is the best most natural defense of a free country.”

“Learned Institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people. They throw that light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty and dangerous encroachments on the public liberty.”

“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.”

“The class of citizens who provide at once their own food and their own raiment, may be viewed as the most truly independent and happy.”

“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.”

“No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”

“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”

“Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government.”

“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.”

“War should only be declared by the authority of the people, whose toils and treasures are to support its burdens, instead of the government which is to reap its fruits.”

“I have no doubt but that the misery of the lower classes will be found to abate whenever the Government assumes a freer aspect and the laws favor a subdivision of Property.”

“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.”

“The essence of Government is power and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.”