Top 350 James Madison Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 4 of 8

151. “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

Featured in: Real Quotes

152. “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

153. “A sincere and steadfast co-operation in promoting such a reconstruction of our political system as would provide for the permanent liberty and happiness of the United States.”

— James Madison

154. “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

155. “The governments of Europe are afraid to trust the people with arms. If they did, the people would certainly shake off the yoke of tyranny, as America did.”

— James Madison

156. “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?”

— James Madison

157. “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

158. “Thus the right of nullification meant by Mr. Jefferson is the natural right, which all admit to be a remedy against insupportable oppression.”

— James Madison

159. “What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes in any new branch of commerce when he knows not that his plans may be rendered unlawful before they can be executed?”

— James Madison

160. “Every word decides a question between power and liberty.”

— James Madison

161. “Popular liberty might then have escaped the indelible reproach of decreeing to the same citizens, the hemlock on one day, and statues on the next.”

— James Madison

162. “There is not a shadow of right in the general government to intermingle with religion. Its least interference with it would be a most flagrant usurpation.”

— James Madison

163. “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.”

— James Madison

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

— James Madison

165. “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.”

— James Madison

166. “In the extent and proper structure of the Union, therefore, we behold a republican remedy for the disease incident to republican government.”

— James Madison

167. “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

168. “The Convention thought it wrong to admit in the Constitution the idea that there could be property in men.”

— James Madison

169. “This policy of supplying by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives, might be traced through the whole system of human affairs, both private and public.”

— James Madison

170. “The powers of the federal government are enumerated; it can only operate in certain cases; it has legislative powers on defined and limited objects, beyond which it cannot extend its jurisdiction.”

— James Madison

171. “The power of taxing people and their property is essential to the very existence of government.”

— James Madison

172. “The strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast; ambition, avarice, vanity, the honorable or venal love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace.”

— James Madison

173. “The most common and durable source of faction has been the various and unequal distribution of property.”

— James Madison

174. “The passions, therefore, not the reason, of the public would sit in judgment. But it is the reason, alone, of the public, that ought to control and regulate the government. The passions ought to be controlled and regulated by the government.”

— James Madison

175. “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.”

— James Madison

176. “The Alien bill proposed in the Senate is a monster that must forever disgrace its parents.”

— James Madison

177. “Where a majority are united by a common sentiment, and have an opportunity, the rights of the minor party become insecure.”

— James Madison

178. “Respect for character is always diminished in proportion to the number among whom the blame or praise is to be divided.”

— James Madison

179. “A bad cause seldom fails to betray itself.”

— James Madison

180. “For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power?”

— James Madison

181. “The best service that can be rendered to a Country, next to that of giving it liberty, is in diffusing the mental improvement equally essential to the preservation, and the enjoyment of the blessing.”

— James Madison

Featured in: Country Quotes

182. “The definition of the right of suffrage is very justly regarded as a fundamental article of republican government.”

— James Madison

183. “Government destitute of energy, will ever produce anarchy.”

— James Madison

184. “Public opinion sets bounds to every government, and is the real sovereign in every free one.”

— James Madison

Featured in: Real Quotes

185. “Ecclesiastical establishments tend to great ignorance and corruption.”

— James Madison

186. “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.”

— James Madison

Featured in: Country Quotes

187. “The inference to which we are brought is that the causes of faction cannot be removed and that relief is only to be sought in the means of controlling its effects.”

— James Madison

188. “The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of Government. But what is Government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?”

— James Madison

189. “No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity.”

— James Madison

190. “Liberty and order will never be perfectly safe until a trespass on the Constitution provisions for either, shall be felt with the same keenness that resents and invasion of the dearest rights...”

— James Madison

191. “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.”

— James Madison

192. “One nation is to another what one individual is to another; with this melancholy distinction perhaps, that the former with fewer of the benevolent emotions than the latter, are under fewer restraints also from taking undue advantage of the indiscretions of each other.”

— James Madison

193. “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.”

— James Madison

194. “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.”

— James Madison

195. “In time of actual war, great discretionary powers are constantly given to the Executive Magistrate. Constant apprehension of War, has the same tendency to render the head too large for the body. A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty.”

— James Madison

196. “The legislative department is everywhere extending the sphere of its activity and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex.”

— James Madison

197. “Strongly guarded as is the separation between Religion and Government in the Constitution of the United States, the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies may be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short history.”

— James Madison

198. “A President is impeachable if he attempts to subvert the Constitution.”

— James Madison

199. “Religion flourishes in greater purity, without than with the aid of Government.”

— James Madison

200. “The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society.”

— James Madison