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[Restraints on the press] in all ages, have debauched morals, depressed liberty, shackled religion, supported despotism, and deluged the scaffold with blood.

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
Presses
Scaffold
Press
Restraints
Blood
Despotism
Liberty
Morals
Moral
Depressed
Age
Supported
Religion
Restraint
Debauched
Ages
Shackled

More quotes by James Madison

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In the first place, it is to be remembered, that the general government is not to be charged with the whole power of making and administering laws. Its jurisdiction is limited to certain enumerated objects, which concern all the members of the republic, but which are not to be attained by the separate provisions of any.
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The nation which reposes on the pillow of political confidence, will sooner or later end its political existence in a deadly lethargy.
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No distinction seems to be more obvious than that between spiritual and temporal matters. Yet whenever they have been made objects of Legislation, they have clashed and contended with each other, till one or the other has gained the supremacy.
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We have seen that the tendency of republican governments is to an aggrandizement of the legislative at the expense of the other departments. The appeals to the people, therefore, would usually be made by the executive and judiciary departments.
James Madison
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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
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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
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Every nation whose affairs betray a want of wisdom and stability may calculate on every loss which can be sustained from the more systematic policy of its wiser neighbors.
James Madison
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Whilst the last members were signing it Doctr. Franklin looking towards the Presidents chair, at the back of which a rising sun happened to be painted, observed to a few members near him, that Painters had found it difficult to distinguish in their art a rising from a setting sun.
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It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.
James Madison
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Those who proposed the Constitution knew, and those who ratified the Constitution also knew that this is...a limited government tied down to specified powers....It was never supposed or suspected that the old Congress could give away the money of the states to encourage agriculture or for any other purpose they pleased.
James Madison
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Our country, if it does justice to itself, will be the workshop of liberty to the civilized world.
James Madison
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Resistance to tyranny is service to God.
James Madison
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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
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A certain degree of preparation for war . . . affords also the best security for the continuance of peace.
James Madison
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[Christianity] existed and flourishes, not only without the support of human laws, but in spite of every opposition from them.
James Madison
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If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one.
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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
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The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic are: first, the delegation of the government, in the latter,to a small number of citizens elected by the rest secondly, the greater number of citizens and greater sphere of country over which the latter may be extended.
James Madison
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No power over the freedom of religion [is] delegated to the United States by the Constitution.
James Madison
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In Europe, charters of liberty have been granted by Power. In America ... charters of power [are] granted by liberty.
James Madison