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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
Slaveholder
Statesperson
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Port Conway
Virginia
James Madison
Jr.
President Madison
J. Madison
Madison
Politics
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Constitutional
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Charter
More quotes by James Madison
I wish not to be regarded as an advocate for the particular organizations of the several state governments . . . they carry strong marks of the haste, and still stronger marks of the inexperience, under which they were framed.
James Madison
[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
The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of government.
James Madison
Our Constitution represents the work of the finger of Almighty God.
James Madison
Government is instituted to protect property of every sort as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government which impartially secures to every man whatever is his own.
James Madison
The number of individuals employed under the Constitution of the United States will be much smaller than the number employed under the particular States.
James Madison
But ambitious encroachments of the federal government, on the authority of the State governments, would not excite the opposition of a single State, or of a few States only. They would be signals of general alarm . . . But what degree of madness could ever drive the federal government to such an extremity.
James Madison
A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained in arms, is the best most natural defense of a free country.
James Madison
Wherever there is interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done.
James Madison
Resolved, That the General Assembly of Virginia, doth unequivocally express a firm resolution to maintain and defend the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution of this State, against every aggression either foreign or domestic, and that they will support the Government of the United States in all measures warranted by the former.
James Madison
The capacity of the female mind for studies of the highest order cannot be doubted, having been sufficiently illustrated by its works of genius, of erudition, and of science.
James Madison
What a perversion of the normal order of things! ... to make power the primary and central object of the social system, and Liberty but its satellite.
James Madison
The people can never willfully betray their own interests: But they may possibly be betrayed by the representatives of the people and the danger will be evidently greater where the whole legislative trust is lodged in the hands of one body of men, than where the concurrence of separate and dissimilar bodies is required in every public act.
James Madison
We have seen the mere distinction of color made in the most enlightened period of time, a ground of the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man.
James Madison
The invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the Constituents.
James Madison
The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man.
James Madison
I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.
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
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
That useful alterations will be suggested by experience, could not but be foreseen . . . . It moreover equally enables the general and state governments to originate the amendment of errors as they may be pointed out by the experience on one side or on the other.
James Madison
