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Top James Madison Quotes

Browse top 48 most favorite famous quotes and sayings by James Madison.

Favorite James Madison Quotes

1. "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
2. "Where we see the same faults followed regularly by the same misfortunes, we may reasonably think that if we could have known the first we might have avoided the others." ~ James Madison
3. "As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights." ~ James Madison
4. "Foreigners have been encouraged to settle among you. Industry and virtue have been promoted by mutual emulation and mutual inspection; commerce and the arts have flourished; and I cannot help attributing those continual exertions of genius which appear among you to the inspiration of liberty, and that love of fame and knowledge which always accompany it. Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind, and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect. How far this is the case with Virginia will more clearly appear when the ensuing trial is made.[Letter to William Bradford Jr. April 1 1774]" ~ James Madison
5. "Every new & successful example therefore of a perfect separation between 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 shewing that religion & Govt. will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.[Letter to Edward Livingston, 10 July 1822 - Writings 9:100--103]" ~ James Madison
6. "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
7. "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
8. "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
9. "...[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
10. "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; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be to-morrow." ~ James Madison
11. "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
12. "[The Senate] ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority." ~ James Madison
13. "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
14. "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
15. "The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretext, infringed." ~ James Madison
16. "...we should never think of separation except for repeated and enormous violations" ~ James Madison
17. "The Presidency alone unites the conjectures of the public." ~ James Madison
18. "What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not." ~ James Madison
19. "Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression. In our Governments the real power lies in the majority of the Community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the constituents." ~ James Madison
20. "The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty." ~ James Madison
21. "[T]here remains [in some parts of the country] a strong bias towards the old error, that without some sort of alliance or coalition between Govt. & Religion neither can be duly supported. Such indeed is the tendency to such a coalition, and such its corrupting influence on both parties, that the danger cannot be too carefully guarded agst." ~ James Madison
22. "In framing a system which we wish to last for ages, we shd. not lose sight of the changes which ages will produce. [James Madison in the U.S. Constitutional Convention, June 26, 1787. The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, ed. Max Farrand (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), 1:422.]" ~ James Madison
23. "Expirience is the oracle of truth" ~ James Madison
24. "To have submitted it to the legislative discretion of the States, would have been improper for the same reason; and for the additional reason that it would have rendered too dependent on the State governments that branch of the federal government which ought to be dependent on the people alone." ~ James Madison
25. "In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority." ~ James Madison
26. "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." ~ James Madison
27. "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." ~ James Madison
28. "La más común y duradera fuente de fraccionamiento ha sido la variada y desigual distribución de la propiedad" ~ James Madison
29. "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
30. "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
31. "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
32. "Liberty is to faction what air is to fire..." ~ James Madison
33. "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
34. "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
35. "If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." ~ James Madison
36. "Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives." ~ James Madison
37. "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." ~ James Madison
38. "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." ~ James Madison
39. "The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home." ~ James Madison
40. "No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." ~ James Madison
41. "If men were angels, no government would be necessary." ~ James Madison
42. "A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained in arms, is the best most natural defense of a free country." ~ James Madison
43. "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
44. "Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power." ~ James Madison
45. "Philosophy is common sense with big words." ~ James Madison
46. "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
47. "It may not be easy, in every possible case, to trace the line of separation between the rights of religion and the Civil authority with such distinctness as to avoid collisions and doubts on unessential points. The tendency to usurpation on one side or the other, or to a corrupting coalition or alliance between them, will be best guarded agst. by an entire abstinence of the Govt. from interference in any way whatsoever, beyond the necessity of preserving public order, and protecting each sect agst. trespasses on its legal rights by others.[Letter to the Reverend Jasper Adams, January 1, 1832]" ~ James Madison
48. "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." ~ James Madison

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James Madison Quotes
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I love songs because by nature they are concise; they sum up. I try to use as few words as possible. It's usually funnier that way, anyway."
Author: Cass McCombs

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