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James Madison Quotes "Ambition must be made to counteract ambition." "A man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them." "A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people." "All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree." "If men were angels, no government would be necessary." "What is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?" "The circulation of confidence is better than the circulation of money." "Men cannot be justly bound by laws, in making which they have no share." "Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power." "War contains so much folly, as well as wickedness, that much is to be hoped from the progress of reason." "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 rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted." "In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority." "In a just and free government…the rights both of property and of persons ought to be effectually guarded." "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 personal right to acquire property, which is a natural right, gives to property, when acquired, a right to protection, as a social right." "The happy Union of these States is a wonder; their Constitution a miracle; their example the hope of Liberty throughout the world." "Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives." "Let me recommend the best medicine in the world: a long journey, at a mild season, through a pleasant country, in easy stages." "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." "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." "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?" "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." "Each generation should be made to bear the burden of its own wars, instead of carrying them on, at the expense of other generations." "A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained in arms, is the best most natural defense of a free country." "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." Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects? I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in shewing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity the less they are mixed together. "A pure democracy is a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person." "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." "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 accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny." "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." "The powers delegated by this constitution, are appropriated to the departments to which they are respectively distributed: so that the legislative department shall never exercise the powers vested in the executive or judicial; nor the executive exercise the powers vested in the legislative or judicial; nor the judicial exercise the powers vested in the legislative or executive departments." "I am among those who are most anxious for the preservation of the Union of the States, and for the success of the Constitutional experiment of which it is the basis. We owe it to ourselves, and to the world, to watch, to cherish, and as far as possible, to perfect a new modification of the powers of Government, which aims at the better security against external danger and internal disorder, a better provision for national strength and individual rights, than had been exemplified under any previous form." |
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