Top 35 James Madison Quotes

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.

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.

If men were angels, no government would be necessary.

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

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

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

Union of religious sentiments begets a surprising confidence.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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?

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 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.

Philosophy is common sense with big words.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.