Words matter. These are the best James Madison Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes in any new branch of commerce when he knows not that his plans may be rendered unlawful before they can be executed?
Each generation should be made to bear the burden of its own wars, instead of carrying them on, at the expense of other generations.
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.
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.
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.
In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority.
All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.
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 with blood for centuries.
A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained in arms, is the best most natural defense of a free country.
The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to an uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government.
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.
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.
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.
War contains so much folly, as well as wickedness, that much is to be hoped from the progress of reason.
In no instance have… the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people.
A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.
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.
The rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.
Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.
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?
I should not regret a fair and full trial of the entire abolition of capital punishment.
The circulation of confidence is better than the circulation of money.
The personal right to acquire property, which is a natural right, gives to property, when acquired, a right to protection, as a social right.
War should only be declared by the authority of the people, whose toils and treasures are to support its burdens, instead of the government which is to reap its fruits.
The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war.
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.
Philosophy is common sense with big words.
Religion flourishes in greater purity, without than with the aid of Government.
Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
All that seems indispensible in stating the account between the dead and the living, is to see that the debts against the latter do not exceed the advances made by the former.
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.
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.
There is no maxim, in my opinion, which is more liable to be misapplied, and which, therefore, more needs elucidation, than the current one, that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong.
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.
A pure democracy is a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person.
No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.
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.
If men were angels, no government would be necessary.
As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed.
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.
