James Madison Quotes
James Madison Quotes. Below is a collection of famous James Madison quotes. Here you can find the most popular and greatest quotes by James Madison. Share these quotations with your friends and family.
The proposed Constitution is, in strictness, neither a national nor a federal constitution; but a composition of both.
By James Madison
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
By James Madison
Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.
By James Madison
When you've got so many people on something trying to make it better, you're going to get a pretty good product,
By James Madison
What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their natural and surest support.
By James Madison
What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual & surest support?
By James Madison
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.
By James Madison
The personal right to acquire property, which is a natural right, gives to property, when acquired, a right to protection, as a social right
By James Madison
The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home
By James Madison
Respect for character is always diminished in proportion to the number among whom the blame or praise is to be divided.
By James Madison
Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect
By James Madison
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.
By James Madison
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.
By James Madison
In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority.
By James Madison
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
By James Madison
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.
By James Madison
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy
By James Madison
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
By James Madison
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.
By James Madison
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.
By James Madison
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.
By James Madison
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.
By James Madison
A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained in arms, is the best most natural defense of a free country.
By James Madison
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.
By James Madison
... Religion ... [is] the basis and foundation of government ... before any man can be considered as a member of civil society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governor of the Universe.
By James Madison
To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.
By James Madison