Quotes By James Madison

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Wherever there is interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done.

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.

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.

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

The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.

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.

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

A man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them.

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.

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.