"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 truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted."
— James Madison

"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise."
— 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)

"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

"[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)

"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

"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)

"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

"We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self- government; upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God."
— 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

"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

"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

"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

"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

"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

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

""We have not staked the future of our society upon the power of government — far from it. We have staked the future of all our political institutions upon the capacity for self-government; upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.""
— 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)

"We have staked the whole future of American civilization not upon the power of government -- far from it. We have staked the future of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God."
— 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)

"Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power that knowledge gives."
— James Madison

"We have heard of the impious doctrine in the old world, that the people were made for kings, not kings for the people. Is the same doctrine to be revived in the new, in another shape - that the solid happiness of the people is to be sacrificed to the views of political institutions of a different form? It is too early for politicians to presume on our forgetting that the public good, the real welfare of the great body of the people, is the supreme object to be pursued; and that no form of government whatever has any other value than as it may be fitted for the attainment of this object.
"
— 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)

"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)

""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

"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

"Equal laws protecting equal rights…the best guarantee of loyalty and love of country."
— 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

"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

"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 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."
— 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