A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to Farce, or a Tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance. and a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.
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I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on the objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents
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A universal and perpetual peace, it is to be feared, is in the catalogue of events which will never exist but in the imaginations of visionary...
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If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy
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It is certain that every class is interested in [educational] establishments which give to the human mind its highest improvements, and to eve...
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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.
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A knowledge of the Globe and its various inhabitants, however slight ... has a kindred effect with that of seeing them as travellers, which ne...
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Liberty is to faction, what air is to fire, an ailment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be a less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.
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No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity. With equal, nay with greater reason, a body of men are unfit to be both judges and parties at the same time.
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We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind of self-government; upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.
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The proposed Constitution is, in strictness, neither a national nor a federal constitution; but a composition of both.
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A sincere and steadfast co-operation in promoting such a reconstruction of our political system as would provide for the permanent liberty and...
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Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other sects
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But ambitious encroachments of the federal government, on the authority of the State governments, would not excite the opposition of a single State, or of a few States only. They would be signals of general alarm... But what degree of madness could ever drive the federal government to such an extremity.
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I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.
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Liberty may be endangered by the abuses of liberty as well as by the abuses of power.
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To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.
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Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; have in general been as short in their lives as they are violent in their deaths.
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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.
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In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself
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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.
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What has been the fruits of Christianity? ...Superstition, bigotry and persecution.
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Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect
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If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.
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Religion flourishes in greater purity, without than with the aid of Government.
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A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained in arms, is the best most natural defense of a free country.
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In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority.
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In our governments the real power lies in the majority of the community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not ...
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Respect for character is always diminished in proportion to the number among whom the blame or praise is to be divided.
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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.
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