James Madison Quotations

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

If men were angels, no government would be necessary.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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?

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.

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...

We look back, already, with astonishment, at the daring outrages committed by despotism, on the reason and rights of man; we look forward with joy, to the period, when it shall be despoiled of all its usurpations, and bound forever in the chains, with which it had loaded its miserable victims.

In proportion to the value of this revolution; in proportion to the importance of instruments, every word of which decides a question between power and liberty; in proportion to the solemnity of acts, proclaiming the will authenticated by the seal of the people, the only earthly source of authority, ought to be the vigilance with which they are guarded by every citizen in private life, and the circumspection with which they are executed by every citizen in public trust.

As compacts, charters of government are superior in obligation to all others, because they give effect to all others. As truths, none can be more sacred, because they are bound, on the conscience by the religious sanctions of an oath. As metes and bounds of government, they transcend all other land-marks, because every public usurpation is an encroachment on the private right, not of one, but of all.

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

There is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust.

But the most deplorable effect of all, is that diminution of attachment and reverence, which steals into the hearts of the people, towards a political system which betrays so many marks of infirmity, and disappoints so many of their flattering hopes. No government, any more than an individual, will long be respected, without being truly respectable; nor be truly respectable, without possessing a certain portion of order and stability.

Nothing could be more irrational than to give the people power, and to withhold from them information without which power is abused.

If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare... they may appoint teachers in every state... The powers of Congress would subvert the very foundation, the very nature of the limited government established by the people of America.

Americans have the right and advantage of being armed

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

The preservation of a free government requires not merely that the metes and bounds which separate each department of power be invariably maintained; but more especially that neither of them be suffered to overleap the great Barrier which defends the rights of the people. The Rulers who are guilty of such an encroachment, exceed the commission from which they derive their authority and are Tyrants. The people who submit to it are governed by laws made neither by themselves nor by an authority derived from them, and are slaves.

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.

What becomes of the surplus of human life? It is either, 1st. destroyed by infanticide, as among the Chinese and Lacedemonians; or 2d. it is stifled or starved, as among other nations whose population is commensurate to its food; or 3d. it is consumed by wars and endemic diseases; or 4th. it overflows, by emigration, to places where a surplus of food is attainable.

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

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...

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

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.

Frequent elections are unquestionably the only policy by which this dependence and sympathy can be effectually secured. But what particular degree of frequency may be absolutely necessary for the purpose, does not appear to be susceptible of any precise calculation; and must depend on a variety of circumstances with which it may be connected. Let us consult experience, the guide that ought always to be followed, whenever it can be found.

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.

At first view it might seem not to square with the republican theory, to suppose either that a majority have not the right, or that a minority will have the force to subvert a government . . . . But theoretic reasoning in this, as in most other cases, must be qualified by the lessons of practice.

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

The primary function of government is to protect the minority of the opulent from the majority of the poor.

I hope this will find you...enjoying the commencement of a new year with every prospect that can make it a happy one.