Quotes By James Madison

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.

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

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

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

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.

The loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or imagined, from abroad.

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

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

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.

The personal right to acquire property, which is a natural right, gives to property, when acquired, a right to protection, as a social right.

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

Religion flourishes in greater purity, without than with the aid of Government.

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.

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

Commercial shackles are generally unjust, oppressive, and impolitic.

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

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.

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 rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted.

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.

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.

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

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.

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