A Quote by James Madison

Oppressors can tyrannize only when they achieve a standing army, an enslaved press, and a disarmed populace. — © James Madison
Oppressors can tyrannize only when they achieve a standing army, an enslaved press, and a disarmed populace.
A government resting on the minority is an aristocracy, not a Republic, and could not be safe with a numerical and physical force against it, without a standing army, an enslaved press and a disarmed populace.
Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every country in Europe.
Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States.
The Constitutional Convention debated whether America should even have a standing army. ... They worried that a powerful military could rival civilian government for power in our new country, and of course they worried that having a standing army around would create too much of a temptation to use it.
The reactionaries are in possession of force, in not only the army and police, but in the press and the schools
Black people are the only ones told to love our oppressors. I hate that. We've been loving our oppressors for a long time, and nothing has changed - that love has to be reciprocated.
But almost always, during the initial stage of the struggle, the oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors, or sub oppressors. The very structure of their thought has been conditioned by the contradiction of the concrete, existential situation by which they were shaped. Their ideal is to be men; but for them to be men is to be oppressors
A standing army is like a standing member. It's an excellent assurance of domestic tranquility, but a dangerous temptation to foreign adventure.
A standing army is a standing menace to liberty.
The press needs stories constantly. No need to bleed, just feed. Branding will keep you standing... Get press not stress.
The obligation d'âme meant that his only allegiance was to Felix, making them a separate kingdom of two, with Felix as king and Mildmay as ministers, army, and populace all combined in one. A stormy little kingdom, I thought, with periodic flare-ups of civil war and a magnificently unstable government. And I was glad I wasn’t a citizen of it.
This [a state militia system] appears to me the only substitute that can be devised for a standing army, and the best possible security against it, if it should exist.
Some people achieve the top of the ladder and only then realise it was standing against the wrong wall.
Blacks were not enslaved because they were black but because they were available. Slavery has existed in the world for thousands of years. Whites enslaved other whites in Europe for centuries before the first black was brought to the Western hemisphere. Asians enslaved Europeans. Asians enslaved other Asians. Africans enslaved other Africans, and indeed even today in North Africa, blacks continue to enslave blacks.
It is only the enlightened ruler and the wise general who will use the highest intelligence of the army for the purposes of spying, and thereby they achieve great results.
What, sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty ... Whenever governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins.
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