If men were angels, no government would be necessary.
James Madison
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 Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.
Philosophy is common sense with big words.
Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power.
The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.
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.
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.
The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.
In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority.
As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed.
The happy Union of these States is a wonder; their Constitution a miracle; their example the hope of Liberty throughout the world.
In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
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.
A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.
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.
All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.
The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.
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.
It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.
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.
A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained in arms, is the best most natural defense of a free country.
No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
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.
To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.
A pure democracy is a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person.
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
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.
What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?
The circulation of confidence is better than the circulation of money.
We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.
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.
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.
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.
A man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them.
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.
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.
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.
Let me recommend the best medicine in the world: a long journey, at a mild season, through a pleasant country, in easy stages.
Wherever there is interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done.
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?
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 entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution.
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.
As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.
Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.
I should not regret a fair and full trial of the entire abolition of capital punishment.
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.
In no instance have... the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people.
