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The people are the only legitimate fountain of power, and it is from them that the constitutional charter, under which the several branches of government hold their power, is derived.
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
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Statesperson
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Port Conway
Virginia
James Madison
Jr.
President Madison
J. Madison
Madison
Power
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Constitutional
People
Fountain
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More quotes by James Madison
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
There never was an assembly of men, charged with a great and arduous trust, who were more pure in their motives, or more exclusively or anxiously devoted to the object committed to them.
James Madison
The advice nearest to my heart and deepest in my convictions is that the union of the states be cherished and perpetuated. Let the open enemy to it be regarded as a Pandora with her box opened, and the disguised one as the serpent creeping with his deadly wiles into paradise.
James Madison
A pure democracy is a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person.
James Madison
A standing army is one of the greatest mischief that can possibly happen.
James Madison
[It] is indispensable that some provision should be made for defending the Community agst [against] the incapicity, negligence or perfidy of the chief Magistrate.
James Madison
All power in human hands is liable to be abused.
James Madison
The regulation of commerce, it is true, is a new power but that seems to be an addition which few oppose and from which no apprehensions are entertained.
James Madison
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
Happily for the states, they enjoy the utmost freedom of religion. This freedom arises from that multiplicity of sects which pervades America, and which is the best and only security for religious liberty in any society.
James Madison
In no part of the Constitution is more wisdom to be found than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not the executive department. ... The trust and the temptation would be too great for any one man.
James Madison
In Europe, charters of liberty have been granted by Power. In America ... charters of power [are] granted by liberty.
James Madison
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
The American people owe it to themselves, and to the cause of free Government, to prove by their establishments for the advancement and diffusion of knowledge, that their political Institutionsare as favorable to the intellectual and moral improvement of Man as they are conformable to his individual and social rights.
James Madison
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
The settled opinion here is that religion is essentially distinct from Civil Govt. and exempt from its cognizance that a connection between them is injurious to both.
James Madison
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
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
[The public has] the habit now of invalidating opinions emanating from me by reference to my age and infirmities.
James Madison
The essence of Government is power and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.
James Madison
