Quotes By James Madison

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

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.

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

The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.

No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

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.

If men were angels, no government would be necessary.

Let me recommend the best medicine in the world: a long journey, at a mild season, through a pleasant country, in easy stages.

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.

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 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.

In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority.

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.

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

Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power.

We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.

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

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.

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?

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.

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

Philosophy is common sense with big words.

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

Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.

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

Union of religious sentiments begets a surprising confidence.

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.

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.