Top 350 James Madison Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “We have seen that the tendency of republican governments is to an aggrandizement of the legislative at the expense of the other departments. The appeals to the people, therefore, would usually be made by the executive and judiciary departments.”

— James Madison

102. “What is here a right towards men, is a duty towards the Creator.”

— James Madison

103. “In framing a system, which we wish to last for ages, we should not lose sight of the changes which ages will produce.”

— James Madison

104. “As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed.”

— James Madison

105. “We have seen the mere distinction of color made in the most enlightened period of time, a ground of the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man.”

— James Madison

106. “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

107. “The Federal Constitution forms a happy combination in this respect; the great and aggregate interests being referred to the national, the local and particular, to the state legislatures.”

— James Madison

108. “Man is known to be a selfish, as well as a social being.”

— James Madison

109. “A standing army is one of the greatest mischief that can possibly happen.”

— James Madison

110. “Democracy was the right of the people to choose their own tyrant.”

— James Madison

111. “I go on the principle that a public debt is a public curse and in a republican government more than in any other.”

— James Madison

112. “We have staked the whole future of our new nation, not upon the power of government; far from it. We have staked the future of all our political constitutions upon the capacity of each of ourselves to govern ourselves according to the moral principles of the Ten Commandments.”

— James Madison

113. “If slavery, as a national evil, is to be abolished, and it be just that it be done at the national expense, the amount of the expense is not a paramount consideration.”

— James Madison

114. “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.”

— James Madison

115. “The magnitude of this evil among us is so deeply felt, and so universally acknowledged, that no merit could be greater than that of devising a satisfactory remedy for it.”

— James Madison

116. “America united with a handful of troops, or without a single soldier, exhibits a more forbidding posture to foreign ambition than America disunited, with a hundred thousand veterans ready for combat.”

— James Madison

117. “You give me a credit to which I have no claim in calling me “the writer of the Constitution of the United States.” This was not, like the fabled Goddess of Wisdom, the offspring of a single brain. It ought to be regarded as the work of many heads and many hands.”

— James Madison

118. “It was by the sober sense of our citizens that we were safely and steadily conducted from monarchy to republicanism, and it is by the same agency alone we can be kept from falling back.”

— James Madison

119. “But the mere circumstance of complexion cannot deprive them of the character of men.”

— James Madison

120. “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?”

— James Madison

121. “If man is not fit to govern himself, how can he be fit to govern someone else?”

— James Madison

122. “The advice nearest to my heart and deepest in my convictions is that the Union of the States be cherished and perpetuated.”

— James Madison

123. “A government resting on the minority is an aristocracy, not a Republic, and could not be safe with a numerical and physical force against it, without a standing army, an enslaved press and a disarmed populace.”

— James Madison

124. “Extend the sphere and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have common motive to invade the rights of other citizens.”

— James Madison

125. “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

126. “As the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial departments of the United States are co-ordinate, and each equally bound to support the Constitution, it follows that each must in the exercise of its functions be guided by the text of the Constitution according to its own interpretation of it.”

— James Madison

127. “The Constitution of the United States was created by the people of the United States composing the respective states, who alone had the right.”

— James Madison

128. “Some degree of abuse is inseparable from the proper use of everything.”

— James Madison

129. “In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority.”

— James Madison

130. “Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act. In this relation, then, the new Constitution will, if established, be a FEDERAL, and not a NATIONAL constitution.”

— James Madison

131. “The real difference of interests, lay not between large and small, but between the Northern and Southern states. The institution of slavery and its consequences formed a line of discrimination.”

— James Madison

132. “To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.”

— James Madison

133. “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.”

— James Madison

134. “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.”

— James Madison

135. “America was indebted to immigration for her settlement and prosperity. That part of America which had encouraged them most had advanced most rapidly in population, agriculture and the arts.”

— James Madison

136. “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.”

— James Madison

137. “A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect and promises the cure for which we are seeking.”

— James Madison

138. “Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”

— James Madison

139. “Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government which impartially secures to every man whatever is his own.”

— James Madison

140. “Our Constitution represents the work of the finger of Almighty God.”

— James Madison

141. “The problem to be solved is, not what form of government is perfect, but which of the forms is least imperfect.”

— James Madison

142. “Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.”

— James Madison

143. “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.”

— James Madison

144. “If we advert to the nature of republican government, we shall find that the censorial power is in the people over the government, and not in the government over the people.”

— James Madison

145. “Can it be of less consequence that the meaning of a Constitution should be fixed and known, than a meaning of a law should be so?”

— James Madison

146. “It may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more constant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves.”

— James Madison

147. “There is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust.”

— James Madison

148. “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.”

— James Madison

149. “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.”

— James Madison

150. “That diabolical Hell conceived principle of persecution rages amoung some and to their eternal Infamy the Clergy can furnish their Quota of Imps for such business.”

— James Madison