James Madison
  • The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.

  • Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.