James Madison was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. He is also known as the “Father of the Constitution.” Here is a compilation of James Madison Quotes.
Short Biography of James Madison
He was born on March 16, 1751, in Port Conway, Virginia. His father died when he was ten years old and his mother passed away when he was sixteen years old.
He studied at Princeton and then went to study law at the College of William and Mary. He became a lawyer in 1774 and started to work for Thomas Jefferson who was a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses.
In 1776, Madison served as a delegate from Virginia to the Continental Congress which led him to become one of its most influential members.
In 1787, Madison helped draft the United States Constitution which led him to become known as “the Father of the Constitution
James Madison famous quotes
“A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained in arms, is the best most natural defense of a free country.”
“If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”
“Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”
“As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.”
“No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”
“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.”
“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.”
“The circulation of confidence is better than the circulation of money.”
“If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”
“Each generation should be made to bear the burden of its own wars, instead of carrying them on, at the expense of other generations.”
“The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war.”
“Oppressors can tyrannize only when they achieve a standing army, an enslaved press, and a disarmed populace.”
“Having outlived so many of my contemporaries, I ought not to forget that I may be thought to have outlived myself.”
“Conscience is the most sacred of all property; other property depending in part on positive law, the exercise of that, being a natural and unalienable right.”
“A good government implies two things: first, fidelity to the object of government, which is the happiness of the people; secondly, a knowledge of the means by which that object can be best attained.”
“Disarm the people- that is the best and most effective way to enslave them.”
“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.”
“Equal laws protecting equal rights…the best guarantee of loyalty and love of country.”
“They can make no law which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as on the great mass of the society.”
“The most productive system of finance will always be the least burdensome.”
“A watchful eye must be kept on ourselves lest while we are building ideal monuments of Renown and Bliss here we neglect to have our names enrolled in the Annals of Heaven.”
“The very definition of tyranny is when all powers are gathered under one place.”
“It is impossible for the man of pious reflection not to perceive in it [the Constitution] a finger of that Almighty hand which has been so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the revolution.”
“Measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.”
“No government, any more than an individual, will long be respected without being truly respectable; nor be truly respectable, without possessing a certain portion of order and stability.”
“A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.”
“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 truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.”
“The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.”
“Let me recommend the best medicine in the world: a long journey, at a mild season, through a pleasant country, in easy stages.”
“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.”
“Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.”
“The number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the state.”
“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.”
“As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed.”
“Public opinion sets bounds to every government, and is the real sovereign in every free one.”
“In no instance have… the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people.”
“To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.”
“Conscience is the most sacred of all property.”
“The safety and happiness of society are the objects at which all political institutions aim, and to which all such institutions must be sacrificed.”
“There never was an assembly of men, charged with a great and arduous trust, who were more pure in their motives, or more exclusively or anxiously devoted to the object committed to them.”
“The great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist the encroachment of the others.”
“The growing wealth acquired by them corporations never fails to be a source of abuses.”
“A pure democracy can admit no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will be felt by a majority, and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party. Hence it is, that democracies 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.”
“That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest.”
“Every man who loves peace, every man who loves his country, every man who loves liberty ought to have it ever before his eyes that he may cherish in his heart a due attachment to the Union of America and be able to set a due value on the means of preserving it.”
“But ambitious encroachments of the federal government, on the authority of the State governments, would not excite the opposition of a single State, or of a few States only. They would be signals of general alarm . . . But what degree of madness could ever drive the federal government to such an extremity.”
“Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression.”
“But the mild voice of reason, pleading the cause of an enlarged and permanent interest, is but too often drowned, before public bodies as well as individuals, by the clamors of an impatient avidity for immediate and immoderate gain.”
“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.”
“It is sufficiently obvious, that persons and property are the two great subjects on which Governments are to act; and that the rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted. These rights cannot well be separated.”
“To provide employment for the poor, and support for the indigent, is among the primary, and, at the same time, not least difficult cares of the public authority.”
“A just security to property is not afforded by that government, under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species.”
“I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution. And if that is not the guide in expounding it, there may be no security.”
“The eyes of the world being thus on our Country, it is put the more on its good behavior, and under the greater obligation also, to do justice to the Tree of Liberty by an exhibition of the fine fruits we gather from it.”
“Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.”
“It is the reason alone, of the public, that ought to control and regulate the government.”
“The problem to be solved is, not what form of government is perfect, but which of the forms is least imperfect.”
“Among the numerous advantages promised by a well-constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction.”
“No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause because his interest would certainly bias his judgment….”
“If man is not fit to govern himself, how can he be fit to govern someone else?”
“How could a readiness for war in time of peace be safely prohibited, unless we could prohibit, in like manner, the preparations and establishments of every hostile nation?”
“Let the influx of money be ever so great, if there be no confidence, property will sink in value… The circulation of confidence is better than the circulation of money.”
“A universal peace, it is to be feared, is in the catalogue of events, which will never exist but in the imaginations of visionary philosophers, or in the breasts of benevolent enthusiasts.”
“The advice nearest to my heart and deepest in my convictions is that the Union of the States be cherished and perpetuated.”
“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.”
“Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.”
“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.”
“Crisis is the rallying cry of the tyrant.”
“We are teaching the world the great truth that Governments do better without Kings & Nobles than with them. The merit will be doubled by the other lesson that Religion Flourishes in greater purity, without than with the aid of Government.”
“The religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate.”
“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?”
“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.”
“Resistance to tyranny is service to God.”
“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.”
“With respect to the words “general welfare,” I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.”
“The means of defence against 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.”
“A people armed and free, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition and is a bulwark for the nation against foreign invasion and domestic oppression.”
“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Philosophy is common sense with big words.”
“The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man.”
“It is to the press mankind are indebted for having dispelled the clouds which so long encompassed religion, for disclosing her genuine lustre, and disseminating her salutary doctrines.”
“Testimony of all ages forces us to admit that war is among the most dangerous enemies to liberty, and that the executive is the branch most favored by it of all the branches of Power.”
“Some degree of abuse is inseparable from the proper use of everything.”
“[Restraints on the press] in all ages, have debauched morals, depressed liberty, shackled religion, supported despotism, and deluged the scaffold with blood.”