X

Sort by

Quote length

Sentiment

Change font

Change background

James Madison Inspirational Quotes (259)

Page 4 of 11
Filter & Style
Image
The express authority of the people alone could give validity to the Constitution.
James Madison
Image
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.
James Madison
Image
Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just Government instituted to secure & perpetuate it needs them not.
James Madison
Image
The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it.
James Madison
Image
Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression.
James Madison
Image
[In a democracy] a common passion or interest will, in almost every case , be felt by a majority of the whole a communication and concert results from the form of government itself and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual.
James Madison
Image
We are teaching the world the great truth that Governments do better without Kings & Nobles than with them.
James Madison
Image
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
Image
All power in human hands is liable to be abused.
James Madison
Image
[A] mere demarcation on parchment of the constitutional limits of the several departments is not a sufficient guard against those encroachments which lead to a tyrannical concentration of all the powers of government in the same hands.
James Madison
Image
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
Image
Bills of attainder, ex-post facto laws and laws impairing the obligation of contracts are contrary to the first principles of the social compact, and to every principle of sound legislation.
James Madison
Image
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. With equal, nay with greater reason, a body of men are unfit to be both judges and parties at the same time.
James Madison
Image
What is here a right towards men, is a duty towards the Creator.
James Madison
Image
[Property] embraces everything to which a man may attach a value and have a right.
James Madison
Image
If men were angels, there would be no need of government.
James Madison
Image
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.
James Madison
Image
By rendering the labor of one, the property of the other, they cherish pride, luxury, and vanity on one side on the other, vice and servility, or hatred and revolt.
James Madison
Image
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
Image
The advice nearest to my heart and deepest in my convictions is that the Union of the States be cherished and perpetuated.
James Madison
Image
I should not regret a fair and full trial of the entire abolition of capital punishment.
James Madison
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Previous
Next