The operations of the federal government will be most extensive and important in times of war and danger; those of the state governments, in times of peace and security.
— James Madison
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.
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.
A sincere and steadfast co-operation in promoting such a reconstruction of our political system as would provide for the permanent liberty and happiness of the United States.
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.
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.
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.
Let me recommend the best medicine in the world: a long journey, at a mild season, through a pleasant country, in easy stages.
Any reading not of a vicious species must be a good substitute for the amusements too apt to fill up the leisure of the labouring classes.
I should not regret a fair and full trial of the entire abolition of capital punishment.
Every nation whose affairs betray a want of wisdom and stability may calculate on every loss which can be sustained from the more systematic policy of its wiser neighbors.
Each generation should be made to bear the burden of its own wars, instead of carrying them on, at the expense of other generations.
The happy Union of these States is a wonder; their Constitution a miracle; their example the hope of Liberty throughout the world.
Religion flourishes in greater purity, without than with the aid of Government.
Philosophy is common sense with big words.
All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.
We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.
Despotism can only exist in darkness, and there are too many lights now in the political firmament to permit it to remain anywhere, as it has heretofore done, almost everywhere.
To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.
All that seems indispensible in stating the account between the dead and the living, is to see that the debts against the latter do not exceed the advances made by the former.
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.
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.
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
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.
Commercial shackles are generally unjust, oppressive, and impolitic.
A man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them.
As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed.
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.
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.
In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority.
A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.
The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war.
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.
What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?
The number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the state.
What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual and surest support?
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.
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.
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.
The rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted.
Wherever there is interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done.
The internal effects of a mutable policy poisons the blessings of liberty itself.
War contains so much folly, as well as wickedness, that much is to be hoped from the progress of reason.
There is no maxim, in my opinion, which is more liable to be misapplied, and which, therefore, more needs elucidation, than the current one, that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong.
The personal right to acquire property, which is a natural right, gives to property, when acquired, a right to protection, as a social right.
Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.
In no instance have... the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people.
Union of religious sentiments begets a surprising confidence.
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.
As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.
