The Radical James Madison

Adam Cohen over at Zero Energy Construction did a post on the quotes of Founding Father James Madison.   I thought it was excellent so I'm reposting them here:


"All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree."

"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."

"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."

"Commercial shackles are generally unjust, oppressive, and impolitic."

"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."

"Each generation should be made to bear the burden of its own wars, instead of carrying them on, at the expense of other generations."

"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."

"I should not regret a fair and full trial of the entire abolition of capital punishment."

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

"In no instance have... the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people."

"In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority."

"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."

"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."

"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect."

"The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty."

"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."

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

"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."