Quote

But the mild voice of reason, pleading the cause of an enlarged and permanent interest, is but too often drowned, before public bodies as well as individuals, by the clamors of an impatient avidity for immediate and immoderate gain.

James Madison

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
People
Interest
Bodies
Immoderate
Voice
Gain
Enlarged
Individual
Permanent
Pleading
Often
Individuals
Clamor
Body
Gains
Drowned
Reason
Cause
Mild
Wells
Public
Impatient
Clamors
Well
Causes
Immediate
Avidity

More quotes by James Madison

Image
Power is of an encroaching nature.
James Madison
Image
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
Image
The eyes of the world being thus on our Country, it is put the more on its good behavior, and under the greater obligation also, to do justice to the Tree of Liberty by an exhibition of the fine fruits we gather from it.
James Madison
Image
Another advantage accruing from this ingredient in the constitution of a senate, is the additional impediment it must prove against improper acts of legislation. No law or resolution can now be passed without the concurrence first of a majority of the people, and then of a majority of the states.
James Madison
Image
I do not conceive that power is given to the President and Senate to dismember the empire, or to alienate any great, essential right. I do not think the whole legislative authority have this power. The exercise of the power must be consistent with the object of the delegation.
James Madison
Image
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
Image
And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.
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
If we advert to the nature of republican government, we shall find that the censorial power is in the people over the government, and not in the government over the people.
James Madison
Image
From the the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results.
James Madison
Image
What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.
James Madison
Image
I am unable to conceive that the state legislatures which must feel so many motives to watch, and which possess so many means of counteracting the federal legislature, would fail either to detect or to defeat a conspiracy of the latter against the liberties of their common constituencies.
James Madison
Image
[Property] embraces everything to which a man may attach a value and have a right.
James Madison
Image
The people of the U.S. owe their Independence & their liberty, to the wisdom of descrying in the minute tax of 3 pence on tea, the magnitude of the evil comprized in the precedent. Let them exert the same wisdom, in watching agst every evil lurking under plausible disguises, and growing up from small beginnings.
James Madison
Image
A sincere and steadfast co-operation in promoting such a reconstruction of our political system as would provide for the permanent liberty and happiness of the United States.
James Madison
Image
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land.
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
In all great changes of established governments, forms ought to give way to substance
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
There is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust.
James Madison