James Madison Quotations

The circulation of confidence is better than the circulation of money.

If men were angels, no government would be necessary.

A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained in arms, is the best most natural defense of a free country.

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

Each generation should be made to bear the burden of its own wars, instead of carrying them on, at the expense of other generations.

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.

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.

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

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

What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual and surest support?

Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.

The people are the only legitimate fountain of power, and it is from them that the constitutional charter, under which the several branches of government hold their power, is derived.

War should only be declared by the authority of the people, whose toils and treasures are to support its burdens, instead of the government which is to reap its fruits.

A pure democracy is a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person.

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

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.

It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.

Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government.

What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.

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

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 with blood for centuries.

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.

Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

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

Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise.... During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution.

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

The rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted.

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.

A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce, or a tragedy, or perhaps both.

The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.

To the press alone, chequered as it is with abuses, the world is indebted for all the triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.

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

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

The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.

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

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.

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.

Learned Institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people. They throw that light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty and dangerous encroachments on the public liberty.

The Constitution preserves the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation where the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.

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

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

What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes in any new branch of commerce when he knows not that his plans may be rendered unlawful before they can be executed?

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.

The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to an uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government.

In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority.

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

All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.

I have no doubt but that the misery of the lower classes will be found to abate whenever the Government assumes a freer aspect and the laws favor a subdivision of Property.

It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.

A man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them.

The loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or imagined, from abroad.

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.

The operations of the federal government will be most extensive and important in times of war and danger; those of the State governments, in times of peace and security.

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.

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.

The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.

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

Despotism can only exist in darkness, and there are too many lights now in the political firmament to permit it to remain anywhere, as it has heretofore done, almost everywhere.

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

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.

A sincere and steadfast co-operation in promoting such a reconstruction of our political system as would provide for the permanent liberty and happiness of the United States.

The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war.

I should not regret a fair and full trial of the entire abolition of capital punishment.

The internal effects of a mutable policy poisons the blessings of liberty itself.

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.

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 class of citizens who provide at once their own food and their own raiment, may be viewed as the most truly independent and happy.

Commercial shackles are generally unjust, oppressive, and impolitic.

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

Union of religious sentiments begets a surprising confidence.

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.

Of all the enemies of public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded.

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

We had some great set-ups with Inge and Jessica Miller in the middle, ... Inge gets better and better everyday. I think at first she had to get used to what was going on, but she is really starting to move the ball well and ignite our attack.

Americans need not fear the federal government because they enjoy the advantage of being armed, which you possess over the people of almost every other nation.

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?

Oppressors can tyrannize only when they achieve a standing army, an enslaved press, and a disarmed populace.

Freedom has more often been lost in small steps by progressive incrementalism, than it has been by catastrophic upheavals such as violence or war.

Crisis is the rallying cry of the tyrant.

Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.

If there be a principle that ought not to be questioned within the United States, it is that every man has a right to abolish an old government and establish a new one. This principle is not only recorded in every public archive, written in every American heart, and sealed with the blood of American martyrs, but is the only lawful tenure by which the United States hold their existence as a nation.

We have staked the whole future of our new nation, not upon the power of government; far from it. We have staked the future of all our political constitutions upon the capacity of each of ourselves to govern ourselves according to the moral principles of the Ten Commandments.

I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.

No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

Some degree of abuse is inseparable from the proper use of every thing; and in no instance is this more true than in that of the press. It has accordingly been decided, by the practice of the states, that it is better to leave a few of its noxious branches to their luxuriant growth, than, by pruning them away, to injure the vigor of those yielding the proper fruits.

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.

That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest.

The governments of Europe are afraid to trust the people with arms. If they did, the people would certainly shake off the yoke of tyranny, as America did.

If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one....

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.

A government resting on the minority is an aristocracy, not a Republic, and could not be safe with a numerical and physical force against it, without a standing army, an enslaved press and a disarmed populace.

The future and success of America is not in this Constitution, but in the laws of God upon which this Constitution is founded.

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

To provide employment for the poor, and support for the indigent, is among the primary, and, at the same time, not least difficult cares of the public authority.

[A]s it must be admitted that the remedy under the Constitution lies where it has been marked out by the Constitution; and that no appeal can be consistently made from that remedy by those who were and still profess to be parties to it, but the appeal to the parties themselves having an authority above the Constitution or to the law of nature & of nature's God.

Is there a Legislative power in fact, not expressly prohibited by the Constitution, which might not, according to the doctrine of the Court, be exercised as a means of carrying into effect some specified Power?

Cursed be all that learning that is contrary to the cross of Christ.

A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty.

That the foundation of our national policy should be laid in private morality. If individuals be not influenced by moral principles, it is in vain to look for public virtue; it is, therefore, the duty of legislators to enforce, both by precept and example, the utility, as well as the necessity, of a strict adherence to the rules of distributive justice.

But the mild voice of reason, pleading the cause of an enlarged and permanent interest, is but too often drowned, before public bodies as well as individuals, by the clamors of an impatient avidity for immediate and immoderate gain.