James Madison Quotations Do not separate text from historical background

• As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.
• As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed.
• 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.
• Commercial shackles are generally unjust, oppressive, and impolitic.
• 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.
• 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.

                                                                                                                                                                  James Madison