Quotes About James Madison

#1. Franklin was the best known of the Founding Fathers. His death could not go without some sort of official notice. The House of Representatives, after listening to a brief tribute by James Madison, voted to wear badges of mourning for two months and then got on with business.

Edmund Morgan

#2. On August 26 the Assembly responded by conferring French citizenship upon Joseph Priestley, Jeremy Bentham, William Wilberforce, Anacharsis Cloots, Johann Pestalozzi, Thaddeus Kosciusko, Friedrich Schiller, George Washington, Thomas Paine, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton.

Will Durant

#3. The founding fathers went out of their way to establish a clear "wall of separation" between religion and state, to quote Thomas Jefferson. They reasoned, as James Madison so cleverly articulated, that both religion and government exist in greater purity if kept apart.

Phil Zuckerman

#4. The kindest reaction Hamilton received was from Benjamin Franklin. He was asleep. In contrast, Hamilton's ally James Madison was alert - but with worry in his eyes and woe written across his face.7

Mike Lee

#5. In no instance have ... the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people. James Madison, U.S. President

George Washington

#6. The forefathers, including James Madison, felt very strongly that the duties that we owe to God were outside of government's prerogative, that government had no business interfering with the way we worship God.

Roy Moore

#7. James Madison made clear in Federalist 51 that that this elaborate structure - today often derided as " gridlock " - was created to protect individual freedom against oppression by the majority or by powerful interest groups who exploit government power for their own purposes.

Anonymous

#8. We Americans think, in every country in transition, there's a Thomas Jefferson hiding behind some rock or a James Madison beyond one sand dune.

Joe Biden

#9. But as a war time president James Madison did not display dynamic leadership. Andrew Jackson acknowledged Madison " a great civilian," but declared " the mind of a philosopher could not dwell on blood and carnage with any composure," and judged his talents " not fitted for a stormy sea.

Andrew Jackson

#10. As Bob Dole found out, you can't keep a positive image while being your party's mouthpiece in Congress. That's why no legislative leader since James Madison has ever been elected president.

Dick Morris

#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. The Petition of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Chapman Johnson, Joseph C. Cabell, James Breckenridge, John Hartwell Cocke, and Robert Taylor the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia ... Respectfully representeth ... That the value of science to a republican people, the security it ...

Thomas Jefferson

#13. Slavery was immensely profitable to some masters. James Madison told a British visitor shortly after the American Revolution that he could make 257 dollars on every (black slave) in a year, and spend only 12 or 13 dollars on his keep.

Howard Zinn

#14. 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

#15. For [Louis] Brandeis, it's not a technical question of channeling what would James Madison say. It's how do we take these inherent human natural rights of liberty and translate them into an age of new technolog

Jeffrey Rosen

#16. For thirty-six of the forty years between 1800 and 1840, either Jefferson or a self-described adherent of his served as president of the United States: James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, and Martin Van Buren.32 (John Quincy Adams, a one-term president, was the single exception.)

Jon Meacham

#17. 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

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

James Madison

#19. 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.

James Madison

#20. No distinction seems to be more obvious than that between spiritual and temporal matters. Yet whenever they have been made objects of Legislation, they have clashed and contended with each other, till one or the other has gained the supremacy.

James Madison

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

James Madison

#22. The nation which reposes on the pillow of political confidence, will sooner or later end its political existence in a deadly lethargy.

James Madison

#23. Philosophy is common sense with big words.

James Madison

#24. Democracy is the most vile form of government.

James Madison

#25. That useful alterations will be suggested by experience, could not but be foreseen ... It moreover equally enables the general and state governments to originate the amendment of errors as they may be pointed out by the experience on one side or on the other.

James Madison

#26. [In government] the constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other-that the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel over the public rights.

James Madison

#27. Reason, on the contrary, assures us, that as in so great a number, a fit representative would be most likely to be found, so the choice would be less likely to be diverted from him, by the intrigues of the ambitious, or the bribes of the rich.

James Madison

#28. 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

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

James Madison

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

James Madison

#31. 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.

James Madison

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

James Madison

#33. 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

#34. What is here a right towards men, is a duty towards the Creator.

James Madison

#35. Should ardent spirits be everywhere banished from the list of drinks, it will be a revolution not the least remarkable in this revolutionary age, and our country will have its full share in that as in other merits.

James Madison

#36. 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.
[Letter objecting to the use of government land for churches, 1803]

James Madison

#37. The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man.

James Madison

#38. You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.

James Madison

#39. No error is more certain than the one proceeding from a hasty and superficial view of the subject.

James Madison

#40. In this relation, then, the proposed government cannot be deemed a national one; since its jurisdiction extends to certain enumerated objects only, and leaves to the several states, a residuary and inviolable sovereignty over all other objects.

James Madison

#41. History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and it's issuance.

James Madison

#42. Public opinion sets bounds to every government, and is the real sovereign in every free one.

James Madison

#43. Toleration is not the opposite of intolerance, but is the counterfeit of it. Both are despotisms. The one assumes to itself the right of withholding liberty of conscience, the other of granting it.

James Madison

#44. No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity.

James Madison

#45. I regret, as much as any member, the unavoidable weight and duration of the burdens to be imposed; having never been a proselyte to the doctrine, that public debts are public benefits. I consider them, on the contrary, as evils which ought to be removed as fast as honor and justice will permit.

James Madison

#46. The better proof of reverence for that holy name would be not to profane it by making it a topic of legislative discussion ...

James Madison

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

James Madison

#48. I do not conceive that power is given to the President and Senate to dismember the empire, or to alienate any great, essential right. I do not think the whole legislative authority have this power. The exercise of the power must be consistent with the object of the delegation.

James Madison

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

James Madison

#50. 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

#51. Government destitute of energy, will ever produce anarchy.

James Madison

#52. 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?

James Madison

#53. Procrastination in the beginning and precipitation towards the conclusion is the characteristic of such bodies.

James Madison

#54. The growing wealth aquired by them corporations never fails to be a source of abuses.

James Madison

#55. 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

#56. 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.

James Madison

#57. The magnitude of this evil among us is so deeply felt, and so universally acknowledged, that no merit could be greater than that of devising a satisfactory remedy for it.

James Madison

#58. Commercial shackles are generally unjust, oppressive, and impolitic.

James Madison

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

James Madison

#60. 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.

James Madison

#61. Resistance to tyranny is service to God.

James Madison

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

James Madison

#63. Temporary deviations from fundamental principles are always more or less dangerous. When the first pretext fails, those who become interested in prolonging the evil will rarely be at a loss for other pretexts.

James Madison

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

James Madison

#65. 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.

James Madison

#66. Religion [is] the basis and foundation of Government

James Madison

#67. Whilst the last members were signing it Doctr. Franklin looking towards the Presidents chair, at the back of which a rising sun happened to be painted, observed to a few members near him, that Painters had found it difficult to distinguish in their art a rising from a setting sun.

James Madison

#68. [I]t is more convenient to prevent the passage of a law, than to declare it void after it has passed.

James Madison

#69. And if novelties are to be shunned, believe me, the most alarming of all novelties, the most wild of all projects, the most rash of all attempts, is that of rending us in pieces, in order to preserve our liberties, and promote our happiness.

James Madison

#70. 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

#71. The citizens of the United States have peculiar motives to support the energy of their constitutional charters.

James Madison

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

James Madison

#73. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new guards for their future security -

James Madison

#74. Where we see the same faults followed regularly by the same misfortunes, we may reasonably think that if we could have known the first we might have avoided the others.

James Madison

#75. Thus the right of nullification meant by Mr. Jefferson is the natural right, which all admit to be a remedy against insupportable oppression.

James Madison

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

James Madison

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

James Madison

#78. Because we hold it for 'a fundamental and undeniable truth', that religion or 'the duty which we owe to our Creator' and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence.

James Madison

#79. 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.

James Madison

#80. The censorial power is in the people over the government, and not in the government over the people.

James Madison

#81. Experience has instructed us that no skill in the science of government has yet been able to discriminate and define, with sufficient certainty, its three great provinces the legislative, executive, and judiciary; or even the privileges and powers of the different legislative branches.

James Madison

#82. Experience assures us, that the efficacy of the provision has been greatly over-rated; and that some more adequate defense is indispensably necessary for the more feeble, against the more powerful members of the government.

James Madison

#83. In contemplating the pecuniary resources needed for the removal of such a number to so great a distance [freed slaves to Africa], my thoughts and hopes have long been turned to the rich fund presented in the western lands of the nation ...

James Madison

#84. 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 ...

James Madison

#85. People will continue to seek justice until it is found, or until liberty is lost in the pursuit.

James Madison

#86. Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just Government instituted to secure & perpetuate it needs them not.

James Madison

#87. 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.

James Madison

#88. Where a majority are united by a common sentiment, and have an opportunity, the rights of the minor party become insecure.

James Madison

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

James Madison

#90. The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the state shall not be questioned.

James Madison

#91. 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.

James Madison

#92. 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.

James Madison

#93. 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.

James Madison

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

James Madison

#95. A government that does not trust it's law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms is itself unworthy of trust.

James Madison

#96. The strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast; ambition, avarice, vanity, the honorable or venal love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace

James Madison

#97. Republican theory clearly stated that the people held all political power, and only they could delegate authority to a government. The people were free to change governments at will. They didn't need permission from incumbents.

James D. Best

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

James Madison

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

James Madison

#100. I am unable to conceive that the state legislatures which must feel so many motives to watch, and which possess so many means of counteracting the federal legislature, would fail either to detect or to defeat a conspiracy of the latter against the liberties of their common constituencies.

James Madison