James Madison > Quotes

“If tyranny and oppression come to this land it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”
― James Madison

“Philosophy is common sense with big words.”
― James Madison

“The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.”
― James Madison

“I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”
― James Madison

“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 in blood for centuries.”
― James Madison

“The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.”
― James Madison

“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.”
― James Madison

“Disarm the people- that is the best and most effective
way to enslave them.”
― James Madison

“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. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”
― James Madison, The Federalist Papers

“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives. 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”
― James Madison

“Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise.”
― James Madison

“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.”
― James Madison

“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”
― James Madison, Federalist Papers

“No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”
― James Madison

“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”
― James Madison

“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation and foreign commerce. ... The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives and liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement and prosperity of the State.”
― James Madison

“History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and it's issuance.”
― James Madison

“Equal laws protecting equal rights…the best guarantee of loyalty and love of country.”
― James Madison

“You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.”
― James Madison, The Federalist Papers

“[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.”
― James Madison, The Federalist Papers

“A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
― James Madison, The Constitution of the United States of America

“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives.”
― James Madison

“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. ”
― 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.”
― James Madison

“Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”
― James Madison

“Democracy is the most vile form of government.”
― James Madison

“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.”
― James Madison, The Federalist Papers

“Let me recommend the best medicine in the world a long journey at a mild season through a pleasant country in easy stages.”
― James Madison

“The means of defence agst. foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.”
― James Madison, Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 Reported by James Madison

“Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”
― James Madison, Letters and Other Writings of James Madison

“All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree”
― James Madison

“Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits
it for every noble enterprize, every expanded prospect.”
― James Madison

“Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.”
― James Madison

“I entirely concur in the propriety of restoring to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that sense alone it is a legitimate constitution. And, if that be not the guide in expounding it, there can be no security for consistent and stable government.”
― James Madison

“Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.”
― James Madison, The Federalist Papers

“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance.”
― James Madison

“Those who are to conduct a war cannot in the nature of things, be proper or safe judges, whether a war ought to be commenced, continued, or concluded. Thy are barred from the latter functions by a great principle in free government, analogous to that which separates the sword from the purse, or the power of executing from the power of enacting laws.”
― James Madison, The Pacificus-Helvidius Debates of 1793-94: Toward the Completion of the American Founding

“if men were angels no government would be necessary”
― James Madison

“Liberty is to faction what air is to fire...”
― James Madison, The Federalist Papers

“The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home”
― James Madison

“But 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. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”
― James Madison, The Federalist Papers

“on Democracies:

"there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”
― James Madison, Federalist Papers Nos. 10 and 51

“Every new and successful example, therefore, of a perfect separation between the ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance; 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.”
― James Madison

“The man who is possessed of wealth, who lolls on his sofa, or rolls in his carriage, cannot judge of the wants or feelings of the day laborer. The government we mean to erect is intended to last for ages. ... unless wisely provided against, what will become of your government? In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of the landed proprietors would be insecure. An agrarian law would soon take place. If these observations be just, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation. Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. The senate, therefore, ought to be this body; and to answer these purposes...”
― James Madison

“It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. . . . The freemen of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle. We revere this lesson too much, soon to forget it. . . .”
― James Madison

“La más común y duradera fuente de fraccionamiento ha sido la variada y desigual distribución de la propiedad”
― James Madison

“...[at the Constitutional Convention] the States were divided into different interests not by their difference of size, but principally from their having or not having slaves. It did not lie between the large and small States: it lay between the Northern and Southern.”
― James Madison

“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.”
― James Madison, A Memorial and Remonstrance, on the Religious Rights of Man: Written in 1784-85

“Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.”
― James Madison, The Letters of Pacificus and Helvidius (1845) with the Letters of Americanus

“In framing a government, which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty is this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.”
― James Madison