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Philosophy is common sense with big words.

James Madison

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James Madison
Age: 85 †
Born: 1751
Born: March 16
Died: 1836
Died: June 28
4Th U.S. President
Diplomat
Lawyer
Philosopher
Politician
Slaveholder
Statesperson
Writer
Port Conway
Virginia
James Madison
Jr.
President Madison
J. Madison
Madison
Common
Words
Bigs
Sense
Soma
Body
Senses
Medicine
Philosophy
Liberty

More quotes by James Madison

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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
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Another of my wishes is to depend as little as possible on the labour of slaves.
James Madison
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I acknowledge, in the ordinary course of government, that the exposition of the laws and Constitution devolves upon the judicial. But I beg to know upon what principle it can be contended that any one department draws from the Constitution greater powers than another in marking out the limits of the powers of the several departments.
James Madison
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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
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In a free government the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights.
James Madison
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The legislative department is everywhere extending the sphere of its activity and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex.
James Madison
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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
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It is sufficiently obvious, that persons and property are the two great subjects on which Governments are to act and that the rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted. These rights cannot well be separated.
James Madison
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A pure democracy is a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person.
James Madison
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[In government] the constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other-that the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel over the public rights.
James Madison
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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
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Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power.
James Madison
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Man is known to be a selfish, as well as a social being.
James Madison
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[The public has] the habit now of invalidating opinions emanating from me by reference to my age and infirmities.
James Madison
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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
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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
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... the State Legislatures will jealously and closely watch the operations of this Government, and be able to resist with more effect every assumption of power, than any other power on earth can do and the greatest opponents to a Federal Government admit the State Legislatures to be sure guardians of the people's liberty.
James Madison
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[In the case of] dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the states, who are parties thereto, have the right, and are duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil.
James Madison
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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
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Because we hold it for 'a fundamental and undeniable truth', that religion or 'the duty which we owe to our Creator' and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence.
James Madison