Quote

I flatter myself [we] have in this country extinguished forever the ambitious hope of making laws for the human mind.

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
Human
Extinguished
Humans
Flatter
Country
Ambitious
Mind
Laws
Forever
Law
Hope
Making

More quotes by James Madison

Image
Congress should not establish a religion, and enforce the legal observation of it by law, nor compel men to worship God in any Manner contrary to their conscience.
James Madison
Image
[Property] embraces everything to which a man may attach a value and have a right.
James Madison
Image
The religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate.
James Madison
Image
By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest... The latent causes of faction are sown in the nature of man.
James Madison
Image
Disarm the people- that is the best and most effective way to enslave them.
James Madison
Image
As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed.
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
Thus the right of nullification meant by Mr. Jefferson is the natural right, which all admit to be a remedy against insupportable oppression.
James Madison
Image
Nothing could be more irrational than to give the people power, and to withhold from them information without which power is abused.
James Madison
Image
How could a readiness for war in time of peace be safely prohibited, unless we could prohibit, in like manner, the preparations and establishments of every hostile nation?
James Madison
Image
Crisis is the rallying cry of the tyrant.
James Madison
Image
Temporary deviations from fundamental principles are always more or less dangerous. When the first pretext fails, those who become interested in prolonging the evil will rarely be at a loss for other pretexts.
James Madison
Image
The essence of Government is power and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.
James Madison
Image
The proposed Constitution is, in strictness, neither a national nor a federal constitution but a composition of both.
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
Image
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
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
When men exercise their reason coolly and freely, on a variety of distinct questions, they inevitably fall into different opinions, on some of them. When they are governed by a common passion, their opinions if they are so to be called, will be the same.
James Madison
Image
What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?
James Madison
Image
I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.
James Madison