Constitution James Madison Quotes

#1. It was impossible to confine a Government to the exercise of express powers; there must necessarily be admitted powers by implication, unless the Constitution descended to recount every minutia

James Madison

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

James Madison

#3. Strongly guarded as is the separation between Religion and Government in the Constitution of the United States, the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies may be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short history.

James Madison

#4. 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 ...

James Madison

#5. The Federal Constitution forms a happy combination in this respect; the great and aggregate interests being referred to the national, the local and particular, to the state legislatures.

James Madison

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

James Madison

#7. 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?

James Madison

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

James Madison

#9. 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?

James Madison

#10. As the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial departments of the United States are co-ordinate, and each equally bound to support the Constitution, it follows that each must in the exercise of its functions be guided by the text of the Constitution according to its own interpretation of it.

James Madison

#11. In framing a system which we wish to last for ages, we shd. not lose sight of the changes which ages will produce. [James Madison in the U.S. Constitutional Convention, June 26, 1787. The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, ed. Max Farrand (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), 1:422.]

James Madison

#12. Another advantage accruing from this ingredient in the constitution of a senate, is the additional impediment it must prove against improper acts of legislation. No law or resolution can now be passed without the concurrence first of a majority of the people, and then of a majority of the states.

James Madison

#13. It is to be the assent and ratification of the several States, derived from the supreme authority in each State, the authority of the people themselves. The act, therefore establishing the Constitution, will not be a NATIONAL, but a FEDERAL act.

James Madison

#14. A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

James Madison

#15. Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act. In this relation, then, the new Constitution will, if established, be a FEDERAL, and not a NATIONAL constitution.

James Madison

#16. I consider the difference between a system founded on
the legislatures only, and one founded on the people, to be the true difference between a league or treaty and a constitution.

James Madison

#17. As James Madison explained, the Constitution is of no more consequence than the paper on which it is written, unless it be stamped with the approbation of those to whom it is addressed ... THE PEOPLE THEMSELVES.

Jill Lepore

#18. Of all the objections which have been framed against the federal Constitution, this is perhaps the most extraordinary. Whilst the objection itself is levelled against a pretended oligarchy, the principle of it strikes at the very root of republican government.

James Madison

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

James Madison

#20. 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.

James Madison

#21. Neither James Madison, for whom this lecture is named, nor any of the other Framers of the Constitution, were oblivious, careless, or otherwise unaware of the words they chose for the document and its Bill of Rights.

Diane Wood

#22. 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.

James Madison

#23. The number of individuals employed under the Constitution of the United States will be much smaller than the number employed under the particular States.

James Madison

#24. You give me a credit to which I have no claim in calling me "the writer of the Constitution of the United States." This was not, like the fabled Goddess of Wisdom, the offspring of a single brain. It ought to be regarded as the work of many heads and many hands.

James Madison

#25. In all the co-temporary discussions and comments, which the Constitution underwent, it was constantly justified and recommended on the ground, that the powers not given to the government, were withheld from it.

James Madison

#26. 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.

James Madison

#27. Liberty and order will never be perfectly safe until a trespass on the Constitution provisions for either, shall be felt with the same keenness that resents and invasion of the dearest rights ...

James Madison

#28. 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.

James Madison

#29. The purpose of the Constitution is to restrict the majority's ability to harm a minority.

James Madison

#30. The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it.

James Madison

#31. [T]he powers granted by the proposed Constitution are the gift of the people, and may be resumed by them when perverted to their oppression, and every power not granted thereby remains with the people.

James Madison

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

James Madison

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

James Madison

#34. The Constitution of the U.S. forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion.

James Madison

#35. I entirely concur in the propriety of restoring to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that sense alone it is a legitimate constitution. And, if that be not the guide in expounding it, there can be no security for consistent and stable government.

James Madison

#36. Our Constitution represents the work of the finger of Almighty God.

James Madison

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

James Madison

#38. This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land.

James Madison

#39. It is in vain to oppose constitutional barriers to the impulse of self-preservation. It is worse than in vain; because it plants in the Constitution itself necessary usurpations of power, every precedent of which is a germ of unnecessary and multiplied repetitions.

James Madison

#40. In no part of the Constitution is more wisdom to be found than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not the executive department ... The trust and the temptation would be too great for any one man.

James Madison

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

James Madison

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

James Madison