james-madison Quotes About liberty

“The advancement of science and the diffusion of information [is] the best aliment to true liberty.”

Science Freedom Education Liberty Knowledge Media Intelligence

“Toleration is not the opposite of intolerance, but is the counterfeit of it. Both are despotisms. The one assumes to itself the right of withholding liberty of conscience, the other of granting it.”

Liberty Conscience Opposites Assuming Intolerance Patriot Despotism Counterfeit Toleration Withholding

Author:James Madison

“Temporary deviations from fundamental principles are always more or less dangerous. When the first pretext fails, those who become interested in prolonging the evil will rarely be at a loss for other pretexts.”

Firsts Evil Loss Liberty Principles Failing Dangerous Fundamentals Temporary Pretext Fundamental Principles Deviation Prolonging

Book:Selected Writings of James Madison

Source: Selected Writings of James Madison

“May it not be asked of every intelligent friend to the liberties of his country, whether the power exercised in such an act as this ought not to produce great and universal alarm? Whether a rigid execution of such an act, in time past, would not have repressed that information and communication among the people which is indispensable to the just exercise of their electoral rights? And whether such an act, if made perpetual, and enforced with rigor, would not, in time to come, either destroy our free system of government, or prepare a convulsion that might prove equally fatal to it?”

Source: The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution: As Recommended by the General Convention at Philadelphia in 1787. Together with the Journal of the Federal Convention, Luther Martin's Letter, Yates's Minutes, Congressional Opinions, Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of '98-'99, and Other Illustrations of the Constitution

“...Freedom arises from the multiplicity of sects, which prevades America and which is the best and only security for religious liberty in any society. For where there is such a variety of sects, there cannot be a majority of any one sect to oppress and persecute the rest.”

America Religion Religious Liberty Security Majority Arise Variety Sects Multiplicity Religious Liberty

Book:The Debates in the Several State Conventions, on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution: As Recommended by the General Convention at Philadelphia, in 1787. Together with the Journal of the Federal Convention, Luther Martin's Letter, Yates' Minutes, Congressional Opinions, Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of '98-'99, and Other Illustrations of the Constitution

Source: The Debates in the Several State Conventions, on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution: As Recommended by the General Convention at Philadelphia, in 1787. Together with the Journal of the Federal Convention, Luther Martin's Letter, Yates' Minutes, Congressional Opinions, Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of '98-'99, and Other Illustrations of the Constitution

“Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just Government instituted to secure & perpetuate it needs them not.”

Source: Selected Writings of James Madison

“And may I not be allowed to ... read in the character of the American people, in their devotion to true liberty and to the Constitution which is its palladium [protection], ... a Government which watches over ... the equal interdict [prohibition] against encroachments and compacts between religion and the state.”

People May States Character Government Liberty Watches Atheism Equal Constitution Positive Atheism Protection Devotion Prohibition Encroachment

Author:James Madison

“Testimony of all ages forces us to admit that war is among the most dangerous enemies to liberty, and that the executive is the branch most favored by it of all the branches of Power.”

War Age Force Liberty Enemy Dangerous Branches Executives Testimony

Book:James Madison's

Source: James Madison's

“[Restraints on the press] in all ages, have debauched morals, depressed liberty, shackled religion, supported despotism, and deluged the scaffold with blood.”

Age Liberty Moral Blood Presses Restraint Despotism

Book:Letters and Other Writings of James Madison

Source: Letters and Other Writings of James Madison

“[Religious liberty was] in its nature an inalienable right ... because the opinions of men, depending only upon the evidence contemplated by their minds, cannot follow the dictates of other men.”

Men Mind Religious Liberty Opinion Evidence Religious Liberty

Author:James Madison

“The security intended to the general liberty consists in the frequent election and in the rotation of the members of Congress.”

Political Politics Term Liberty Security Members Election Congress Rotation Term Limits

Book:The Federalist: A Commentary on the Constitution of the United States

Source: The Federalist: A Commentary on the Constitution of the United States

“... the State Legislatures will jealously and closely watch the operations of this Government, and be able to resist with more effect every assumption of power, than any other power on earth can do; and the greatest opponents to a Federal Government admit the State Legislatures to be sure guardians of the people's liberty.”

People States Government Able Earth Can Do Liberty Watches Effects Operations Opponents Assumption Federal Government Guardian Legislature State Legislatures Jealously

Book:Selected Writings of James Madison

Source: Selected Writings of James Madison

“As the people of the United States enjoy the great merit of having established a system of Government on the basis of human rights, and of giving it a form without example, which, as they believe, unites the greatest national strength with the best security for public order and individual liberty, they owe to themselves, to their posterity and to the world, a preservation of the system in its purity, its symmetry, and its authenticity.”

Source: 1829-1836

“In time of actual war, great discretionary powers are constantly given to the Executive Magistrate. Constant apprehension of War, has the same tendency to render the head too large for the body. A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty.”

Source: The Writings of James Madison: 1787. The journal of the Constitutional convention

“People will continue to seek justice until it is found, or until liberty is lost in the pursuit.”

People Found Lost Justice Liberty Pursuit

Author:James Madison

“Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.”

Source: The Federalist Papers: A Collection of Essays Written in Favour of the New Constitution

“What a perversion of the normal order of things! ... to make power the primary and central object of the social system, and Liberty but its satellite.”

Order Social Liberty Objects Normal Primaries Satellites Perversion Social Systems

Author:James Madison

“If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”

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

“It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.”

“Americans have the right and advantage of being armed - unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.”

“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.”

“The circulation of confidence is better than the circulation of money.”

Politics Money Liberty Self Esteem Confidence Circulation No Confidence

Book:The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution: As Recommended by the General Convention at Philadelphia in 1787. Together with the Journal of the Federal Convention, Luther Martin's Letter, Yates's Minutes, Congressional Opinions, Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of '98-'99, and Other Illustrations of the Constitution

Source: The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution: As Recommended by the General Convention at Philadelphia in 1787. Together with the Journal of the Federal Convention, Luther Martin's Letter, Yates's Minutes, Congressional Opinions, Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of '98-'99, and Other Illustrations of the Constitution

“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.”