Quotes By James Madison

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

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

Philosophy is common sense with big words.

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

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

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.

Union of religious sentiments begets a surprising confidence.

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.

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.

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

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

The internal effects of a mutable policy poisons the blessings of liberty itself.

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.

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.

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

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.