Top 350 James Madison Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “The protection of these faculties is the first object of government.”

— James Madison

252. “It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage and such only as he believes to be acceptable to him. This duty is precedent, both in order of time and in degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society.”

— James Madison

253. “In all great changes of established governments, forms ought to give way to substance.”

— James Madison

254. “Since it is impossible for the people spontaneously and universally, to move in concert towards their object; and it is therefore essential, that such changes be instituted by some informal and unauthorized propositions, made by some patriotic and respectable citizen or number of citizens.”

— James Madison

255. “Nor is any evidence to be found, either in History or Human Nature, that nations are to be bribed out of a spirit of encroachment and aggression, by humiliations which nourish their pride, or by concessions that extend their resources and power.”

— James Madison

256. “The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man.”

— James Madison

257. “It is to be the assent and ratification of the several States, derived from the supreme authority in each State, the authority of the people themselves. The act, therefore establishing the Constitution, will not be a NATIONAL, but a FEDERAL act.”

— James Madison

258. “Precedents once established are so much positive power.”

— James Madison

259. “Power is of an encroaching nature.”

— James Madison

260. “As to the permanent interest of individuals in the aggregated interests of the community, and in the proverbial maxim, that honesty is the best policy, present temptation is often found to be an overmatch for those considerations.”

— James Madison

261. “For the same reason that the members of the State legislatures will be unlikely to attach themselves sufficiently to national objects, the members of the federal legislature will be likely to attach themselves too much to local objects.”

— James Madison

262. “An armed and trained militia is the firmest bulwark of republics – that without standing armies their liberty can never be in danger, nor with large ones safe...”

— James Madison

263. “Another of my wishes is to depend as little as possible on the labour of slaves.”

— James Madison

264. “Americans have the right and advantage of being armed.”

— James Madison

265. “The rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted.”

— James Madison

266. “A distinction of property results from that very protection which a free Government gives to unequal faculties of acquiring it.”

— James Madison

267. “The character of such a government ought to secure, first, against foreign invasion; secondly, against dissensions between members of the Union, or seditions in particular States; thirdly, to procure to the several States various blessings of which an isolated situation was incapable; fourthly, it should be able to defend itself against encroachment; and fifthly, to be paramount to the State Constitutions.”

— James Madison

268. “The President is responsible to the public for the conduct of the person he has nominated and appointed.”

— James Madison

269. “Who are to be the objects of popular choice? Every citizen whose merit may recommend him to the esteem and confidence of his country.”

— James Madison

270. “Whilst the last members were signing it Doctr. Franklin looking towards the Presidents chair, at the back of which a rising sun happened to be painted, observed to a few members near him, that Painters had found it difficult to distinguish in their art a rising from a setting sun.”

— James Madison

271. “The government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”

— James Madison

272. “That is not a just government where arbitrary restrictions, exemptions, and monopolies deny to part of its citizens that free use of their faculties, and free choice of their occupations.”

— James Madison

273. “There is not a more important and fundamental principle in legislation, than that the ways and means ought always to face the public engagements; that our appropriations should ever go hand in hand with our promises.”

— James Madison

274. “One hundred and seventy-three despots would surely be as oppressive as one.”

— James Madison

275. “Who are to be the electors of the Federal Representatives? Not the rich, more than the poor.”

— James Madison

276. “Besides the obscurity arising from the complexity of objects, and the imperfection of the human faculties, the medium through which the conceptions of men are conveyed to each other adds a fresh embarrassment.”

— James Madison

277. “What is the structure of government that will best guard against the precipitate counsels and factious combinations for unjust purposes, without a sacrifice of the fundamental principle of republicanism?”

— James Madison

278. “Every nation whose affairs betray a want of wisdom and stability may calculate on every loss which can be sustained from the more systematic policy of its wiser neighbors.”

— James Madison

279. “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?”

— James Madison

280. “Man, who preys both on the vegetable and animal species, is himself a prey to neither. He too possesses the reproductive principle far beyond the degree requisite for the bare continuance of his species. What becomes of the surplus of human life to which this principle is competent?”

— James Madison

281. “Congress should not establish a religion, and enforce the legal observation of it by law, nor compel men to worship God in any Manner contrary to their conscience.”

— James Madison

282. “No man can be a competent legislator who does not add to an upright intention and a sound judgment a certain degree of knowledge of the subject on which he is to legislate.”

— James Madison

283. “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

284. “Reason, on the contrary, assures us, that as in so great a number, a fit representative would be most likely to be found, so the choice would be less likely to be diverted from him, by the intrigues of the ambitious, or the bribes of the rich.”

— James Madison

285. “It degrades from the equal rank of Citizens all those whose opinions in Religion do not bend to those of the Legislative authority. Distant as it may be in its present form from the Inquisition, it differs from it only in degree.”

— James Madison

286. “Any reading not of a vicious species must be a good substitute for the amusements too apt to fill up the leisure of the labouring classes.”

— James Madison

287. “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

288. “I should not regret a fair and full trial of the entire abolition of capital punishment.”

— James Madison

289. “Nothing is so contagious as opinion, especially on questions which, being susceptible of very different glosses, beget in the mind a distrust of itself.”

— James Madison

290. “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.”

— James Madison

291. “The citizens of the United States have peculiar motives to support the energy of their constitutional charters.”

— James Madison

292. “The smaller the number and the more permanent and conspicuous the station of men in power, the stronger must be the interest which they will individually feel in whatever concerns the government.”

— James Madison

293. “Our opinions agree as to the evil, moral, political, and economical, of slavery.”

— James Madison

294. “In this relation, then, the proposed government cannot be deemed a national one; since its jurisdiction extends to certain enumerated objects only, and leaves to the several states, a residuary and inviolable sovereignty over all other objects.”

— James Madison

295. “How a regulation so unjust in itself, so foreign to the authority of Congress, and so hurtful to the sale of public land, and smelling so strongly of an antiquated bigotry, could have received the countenance of a committee is truly a matter of astonishment.”

— James Madison

296. “All that seems indispensible in stating the account between the dead and the living, is to see that the debts against the latter do not exceed the advances made by the former.”

— James Madison

297. “The internal effects of a mutable policy poisons the blessings of liberty itself.”

— James Madison

298. “Outlets for the freed blacks are alone wanted for the erasure of the blot from our Republican character.”

— James Madison

299. “The temple through which alone lies the road to that of Liberty.”

— James Madison

300. “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.”

— James Madison