~ Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks -- no form of government can render us secure. To suppose liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea. If there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men. So that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them. ~  ~ There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations ~ ~ It is sufficiently obvious, that persons and property are the two great subjects on which Governments are to act; and that the rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted. These rights cannot be separated ~ ~ The government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government ~ ~ The nation which reposes on the pillow of political confidence, will sooner or later end its political existence in a deadly lethargy ~ ~ Religion flourishes in greater purity, without than with the aid of Government ~ ~ Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect ~ ~ Union of religious sentiments begets a surprising confidence ~ ~ The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. ~ ~ 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 ~ ~ 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. ~ ~ As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights. Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions ~ ~ 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if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what is will be tomorrow ~ ~ We have seen the mere distinction of colour made in the most enlightened period of time, a ground of the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man ~ ~ With respect to the two words "general welfare," I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators. If the words obtained so readily a place in the "Articles of Confederation," and received so little notice in their admission into the present Constitution, and retained for so long a time a silent place in both, the fairest explanation is, that the words, in the alternative of meaning nothing or meaning everything, had the former meaning taken for granted ~ Most Popular Topics:
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 | James Madison Quotes |
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