Top 350 James Madison Quotes (2025 Update)
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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

152. “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

153. “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

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

— James Madison

155. “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

156. “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

157. “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

158. “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

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

— James Madison

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

— James Madison

161. “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

162. “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.”

— James Madison

163. “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

164. “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

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

— James Madison

167. “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

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

— James Madison

169. “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

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

— James Madison

172. “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

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

— James Madison

174. “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

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

— James Madison

176. “In suits at common law, trial by jury in civil cases is as essential to secure the liberty of the people as any one of the pre-existent rights of nature.”

— James Madison

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

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

— James Madison

180. “Democracies have been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death.”

— 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

182. “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

183. “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

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

— James Madison

185. “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

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

— James Madison

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. “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

189. “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

190. “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

191. “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

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

— James Madison

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

— James Madison

194. “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

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 growing wealth aquired by them corporations never fails to be a source of abuses.”

— James Madison

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

— James Madison

198. “The security intended to the general liberty consists in the frequent election and in the rotation of the members of Congress.”

— James Madison

199. “A local spirit will infallibly prevail much more in the members of Congress than a national spirit will prevail in the legislatures of the particular States.”

— James Madison

200. “Who are to be the electors of the federal representatives? Not the rich, more than the poor; not the learned, more than the ignorant; not the haughty heirs of distinguished names, more than the humble sons of obscurity and unpropitious fortune. The electors are to be the great body of the people of the United States. They are to be the same who exercise the right in every State of electing the corresponding branch of the legislature of the State.”

— James Madison