James Madison Quotes

Our country, if it does justice to itself, will be the workshop of liberty to the civilized world.

No government, any more than an individual, will long be respected without being truly respectable; nor be truly respectable, without possessing a certain portion of order and stability.

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.

Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power.

The people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak, or to publish their sentiments; and the freedom of the press, as one of the great bulwarks of liberty, shall be inviolable.

America was indebted to immigration for her settlement and prosperity. That part of America which had encouraged them most had advanced most rapidly in population, agriculture and the arts.

As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed.

Americans have the right and advantage of being armed - unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.

Among the numerous advantages promised by a well-constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction.

The proposed Constitution is, in strictness, neither a national nor a federal constitution; but a composition of both.

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

Measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.

Whenever a youth is ascertained to possess talents meriting an education which his parents cannot afford, he should be carried forward at the public expense.

We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.

In no instance have... the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people.

[I]t is more convenient to prevent the passage of a law, than to declare it void after it has passed.

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.

The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the state shall not be questioned.

And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.

Let me recommend the best medicine in the world: a long journey, at a mild season, through a pleasant country, in easy stages.

The truth was that all men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.

In suits at common law, trial by jury in civil cases is as essential to secure the liberty of the people as any one of the pre-existent rights of nature.

A President is impeachable if he attempts to subvert the Constitution.

Can it be of less consequence that the meaning of a Constitution should be fixed and known, than a meaning of a law should be so?

if the people are to be our governors, they must arm themselves with knowledge.

The safety and happiness of society are the objects at which all political institutions aim, and to which all such institutions must be sacrificed.

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.

[N]o religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

The number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the state.

Good conscience is the most valuable asset of all!

Wherever there is interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done.

It is of great importance in a republic, not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers; but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part.

Procrastination in the beginning and precipitation towards the conclusion is the characteristic of such bodies.

Despotism can only exist in darkness.

What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?

Religion flourishes in greater purity, without than with the aid of Government.

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

Conscience is the most sacred of all property.

What a perversion of the normal order of things! ... to make power the primary and central object of the social system, and Liberty but its satellite.

A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.

Conscience is the most sacred of all property; other property depending in part on positive law, the exercise of that, being a natural and unalienable right.

The personal right to acquire property, which is a natural right, gives to property, when acquired, a right to protection, as a social right.

Democracy was the right of the people to choose their own tyrant.

If we are to take for the criterion of truth the majority of suffrages, they ought to be gotten from those philosophic and patriotic citizens who cultivate their reason.

The happy Union of these States is a wonder; their Constitution a miracle; their example the hope of Liberty throughout the world.

Resistance to tyranny is service to God.

Liberty is to faction what air is to fire.

A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.

Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression.