James Madison Quotes

321 Sourced Quotes

The strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast; ambition, avarice, vanity, the honorable or venal love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace

James Madison
The civil rights of none, shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretext infringed.

James Madison
These examples, though as unfit for the imitation, as they are repugnant to the genius of America, are notwithstanding... very instructive proofs of the necessity of some institution that will blend stability with liberty.

James Madison
It will be remembered, that a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles is solemnly enjoined by most of the state constitutions, and particularly by our own, as a necessary safeguard against the danger of degeneracy, to which republics are liable, as well as other governments, though in a less degree than others.

James Madison
To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.

James Madison
That useful alterations will be suggested by experience, could not but be foreseen.... It moreover equally enables the general and state governments to originate the amendment of errors as they may be pointed out by the experience on one side or on the other.

James Madison
The inference to which we are brought is that the causes of faction cannot be removed and that relief is only to be sought in the means of controlling its effects.

James Madison
The fetters imposed on liberty at home have ever been forged out of the weapons provided for defense against real, pretended, or imaginary dangers from abroad.

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.

James Madison
War contains so much folly, as well as wickedness, that much is to be hoped from the progress of reason.

James Madison
Rapid erasure of the blot on our Republican character.

James Madison
To secure the public good and private rights against the danger of such a faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government, is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed.

James Madison
The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of Government. But what is Government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?

James Madison
Nothing has yet been offered to invalidate the doctrine that the meaning of the Constitution may as well be ascertained by the Legislative as by the Judicial authority.

James Madison
Liberty and order will never be perfectly safe until a trespass on the Constitution provisions for either, shall be felt with the same keenness that resents and invasion of the dearest rights...

James Madison
Commercial shackles are generally unjust, oppressive, and impolitic.

James Madison
It has been said that America is a country for the poor, not for the rich. There would be more correctness in saying it is the country for both, where the latter have a relish for free government; but, proportionally, more for the former than for the latter.

James Madison
I am unable to conceive that the state legislatures which must feel so many motives to watch, and which possess so many means of counteracting the federal legislature, would fail either to detect or to defeat a conspiracy of the latter against the liberties of their common constituencies.

James Madison
Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be 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.

James Madison
I, sir, have always conceived - I believe those who proposed the constitution conceived, and it is still more fully known, and more material to observe, those who ratified the constitution conceived, that this is not an indefinite government deriving its powers from the general terms prefixed to the specified powers - but, a limited government tied down to the specified powers, which explain and define the general terms.

James Madison
They can make no law which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as on the great mass of the society.

James Madison
Any reading not of a vicious species must be a good substitute for the amusements too apt to fill up the leisure of the labouring classes.

James Madison
The power to declare war, including the power of judging the causes of war, is fully and exclusively vested in the legislature.

James Madison
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land.

James Madison
If this spirit shall ever be so far debased, as to tolerate a law not obligatory on the legislature, as well as on the people, the people will be prepared to tolerate any thing but liberty.

James Madison
It is a melancholy reflection that liberty should be equally exposed to danger whether the government have too much power or too little power and that the line which divides these extremes should be so inaccurately defined by experience.

James Madison
The great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means, and personal motives, to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defence must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack.

James Madison
The nation which reposes on the pillow of political confidence, will sooner or later end its political existence in a deadly lethargy.

James Madison
A distinction of property results from that very protection which a free Government gives to unequal faculties of acquiring it.

James Madison
How a regulation so unjust in itself, so foreign to the authority of Congress, and so hurtful to the sale of public land, and smelling so strongly of an antiquated bigotry, could have received the countenance of a committee is truly a matter of astonishment.

James Madison