James Madison Quotes

The American people are too well schooled in the duty and practice of submitting to the will of the majority to permit any serious uneasiness on that account

The powers of the federal government ... result from the compact to which the states are parties, [and are] limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting that compact.

[Religious liberty was] in its nature an inalienable right ... because the opinions of men, depending only upon the evidence contemplated by their minds, cannot follow the dictates of other men.

[Restraints on the press] in all ages, have debauched morals, depressed liberty, shackled religion, supported despotism, and deluged the scaffold with blood.

We have the self-evident right to regulate our trade according to our own will and our own interest . . . . This right can be denied to no independent nation.

[Exchange] the galling burden of bachelorship for the easy yoke of matrimony.

If men were angels, there would be no need of government.

At cheaper and nearer seats of Learning parents with slender incomes may place their sons in a course of education putting them on a level with the sons of the Richest.

The real difference of interests, lay not between large and small, but between the Northern and Southern states. The institution of slavery and its consequences formed a line of discrimination.

Congress should not establish a religion, and enforce the legal observation of it by law, nor compel men to worship God in any Manner contrary to their conscience.

The express authority of the people alone could give validity to the Constitution.

The regulation of commerce, it is true, is a new power; but that seems to be an addition which few oppose and from which no apprehensions are entertained.

In the extent and proper structure of the Union, therefore, we behold a republican remedy for the disease incident to republican government.

Who are to be the objects of popular choice? Every citizen whose merit may recommend him to the esteem and confidence of his country.

It would have marked a want of foresight in the convention, which our own experience would have rendered inexcusable.

I have ever regarded the freedom of religious opinions and worship as equally belonging to every sect.

I hope this will find you...enjoying the commencement of a new year with every prospect that can make it a happy one.

But the mere circumstance of complexion cannot deprive them of the character of men.

It is possible that these may all be insufficient to control the caprice and wickedness of man. But are they not all that government will admit, and all that human prudence can devise?

The smaller the number and the more permanent and conspicuous the station of men in power, the stronger must be the interest which they will individually feel in whatever concerns the government.

The settled opinion here is that religion is essentially distinct from Civil Govt. and exempt from its cognizance; that a connection between them is injurious to both.

The establishment of the chaplainship to Congress is a palpable violation of ... constitutional principles.

The temple through which alone lies the road to that of Liberty.

In all great changes of established governments, forms ought to give way to substance

Bills of attainder, ex-post facto laws and laws impairing the obligation of contracts are contrary to the first principles of the social compact, and to every principle of sound legislation.

The Alien bill proposed in the Senate is a monster that must forever disgrace its parents.

It is to the press mankind are indebted for having dispelled the clouds which so long encompassed religion, for disclosing her genuine lustre, and disseminating her salutary doctrines.

[Christianity] existed and flourishes, not only without the support of human laws, but in spite of every opposition from them.

Having outlived so many of my contemporaries, I ought not to forget that I may be thought to have outlived myself.

Are not the daily devotions conducted by these legal ecclesiastics already degenerating into a scanty attendance, and a tiresome formality?

Man is known to be a selfish, as well as a social being.

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

[The public has] the habit now of invalidating opinions emanating from me by reference to my age and infirmities.

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.

For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power?

Outlets for the freed blacks are alone wanted for the erasure of the blot from our Republican character.

There is not a shadow of right in the general government to intermingle with religion. Its least interference with it would be a most flagrant usurpation.

It may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more constant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves.

Popular liberty might then have escaped the indelible reproach of decreeing to the same citizens, the hemlock on one day, and statues on the next.

This policy of supplying by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives, might be traced through the whole system of human affairs, both private and public.

The Convention thought it wrong to admit in the Constitution the idea that there could be property in men.

Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind, and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.]

Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind, and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded pro

Liberty may be endangered by the abuses of liberty as well as by the abuses of power.

The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries.]

The means of defence agst. foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home.

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

Liberty is to faction what air is to fire...

I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for cent