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Twenty years will produce all the mischief that can be apprehended from the liberty to import slaves. So long a term will be more dishonorable to the National character than to say nothing about it in the Constitution.

— James Madison The Debates in the Federal Convention (1787)

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Slavery

More quotes by James Madison

But what is Government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?

Federalist Papers (1787)

The legislative department is everywhere extending the sphere of its activity and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex.

Federalist Papers (1787)

Slavery is, as you justly complain, a sad blot on our free country.

Letter to Lafayette (1821)

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.

The Constitution requires an adoption in toto, and for ever.

Letter to Alexander Hamilton (1788)

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We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known.

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What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence?

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The worker is the slave of capitalist society, the female worker is the slave of that slave.

James Connolly

The Autocrat of all the Russias will resign his crown, and proclaim his subjects free republicans sooner than will our American masters voluntarily give up their slaves.

Abraham Lincoln

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: James Madison (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.