Quotes from 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.

It is of great importance in a republic, not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers; but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part.

They can make no law which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as on the great mass of the society.

A pure democracy is a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person.

The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society.

As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.

A man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them.

I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution.

The rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted.

The personal right to acquire property, which is a natural right, gives to property, when acquired, a right to protection, as a social right.

We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.

Americans have the right and advantage of being armed - unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.

Oppressors can tyrannize only when they achieve a standing army, an enslaved press, and a disarmed populace.

A people armed and free, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition and is a bulwark for the nation against foreign invasion and domestic oppression.

The future and success of America is not in this Constitution, but in the laws of God upon which this Constitution is founded.

All that seems indispensible in stating the account between the dead and the living, is to see that the debts against the latter do not exceed the advances made by the former.

As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed.

It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.

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.

A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce, or a tragedy, or perhaps both.

To provide employment for the poor, and support for the indigent, is among the primary, and, at the same time, not least difficult cares of the public authority.

Let me recommend the best medicine in the world: a long journey, at a mild season, through a pleasant country, in easy stages.

Learned Institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people. They throw that light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty and dangerous encroachments on the public liberty.

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?