James Madison Quotes

No free country has ever been without Parties, which are a natural offspring of freedom.

No man can be a competent legislator who does not add to an upright intention and a sound judgment a certain degree of knowledge of the subject on which he is to legislate.

A just government has no need for the clergy or the church.

I go on the principle that a public debt is a public curse and in a republican government more than in any other.

How could a readiness for war in time of peace be safely prohibited, unless we could prohibit, in like manner, the preparations and establishments of every hostile nation?

I go by the great republican principle, that the people will have the virtue and intelligence to select men of virtue and wisdom [to the offices of government].

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

I have no doubt but that the misery of the lower classes will be found to abate wherever the Government assumes a freer aspect,& the laws favor a subdivision of property.

A public debt is a public curse.

From the the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results.

Nothing is so contagious as opinion, especially on questions which, being susceptible of very different glosses, beget in the mind a distrust of itself.

Union of religious sentiments begets a surprising confidence, and ecclesiastical establishments tend to great ignorance and corruption; all of which facilitate the execution of mischievous projects.

Ecclesiastical establishments tend to great ignorance and corruption

The capacity of the female mind for studies of the highest order cannot be doubted, having been sufficiently illustrated by its works of genius, of erudition, and of science.

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.

A bad cause seldom fails to betray itself.

Congress shall never disarm any citizen unless such as are or have been in actual rebellion.

Democracy is the most vile form of government.

Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.

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.

A certain degree of preparation for war . . . affords also the best security for the continuance of peace.

Precedents once established are so much positive power.

One hundred and seventy-three despots would surely be as oppressive as one.

Testimony of all ages forces us to admit that war is among the most dangerous enemies to liberty, and that the executive is the branch most favored by it of all the branches of Power.

Who are to be the electors of the Federal Representatives? Not the rich, more than the poor

The danger from legislative usurpations, which, by assembling all power in the same hands, must lead to the same tyranny as is threatened by executive usurpations.

There never was an assembly of men, charged with a great and arduous trust, who were more pure in their motives, or more exclusively or anxiously devoted to the object committed to them.

The most productive system of finance will always be the least burdensome.

No power over the freedom of religion [is] delegated to the United States by the Constitution.

An efficient militia is authorized and contemplated by the Constitution and required by the spirit and safety of free government.

The security intended to the general liberty consists in the frequent election and in the rotation of the members of Congress.

It is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity toward each other.

Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society.

The Constitution of the United States was created by the people of the United States composing the respective states, who alone had the right.

In a free government the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights.

Power is of an encroaching nature.

The internal effects of a mutable policy are still more calamitous. It poisons the blessings of liberty itself.

Measures should be enacted which, without violating the rights of property, would reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity, and raise extreme indigence towards a state of comfort.

It is certain that every class is interested in [educational] establishments which give to the human mind its highest improvements, and to every Country its truest and most durable celebrity.

Government destitute of energy, will ever produce anarchy.

That diabolical Hell conceived principle of persecution rages amoung some and to their eternal Infamy the Clergy can furnish their Quota of Imps for such business.

We are teaching the world the great truth that Governments do better without Kings & Nobles than with them.

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.

All that seems indispensible in stating the account between the dead and the living, is to see that the debts against the latter do not exceed the advances made by the former.

In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature.

The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society.

To consider the degree of concord which ultimately prevailed as less than a miracle.

An armed and trained militia is the firmest bulwark of republics - that without standing armies their liberty can never be in danger, nor with large ones safe.

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.

Union of religious sentiments begets a surprising confidence.