James Madison Quotes

If men were angels, no government would be necessary.

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

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

Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.

Philosophy is common sense with big words.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.