Quotes from James Madison

Whenever a youth is ascertained to possess talents meriting an education which his parents cannot afford, he should be carried forward at the public expense.

The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.

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.

To secure the public good, and private rights, against the danger of… faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and form of popular government, is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed.

By a faction, understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.

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.

Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.

Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.

I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

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.

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

The loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or imagined, from abroad.

The class of citizens who provide at once their own food and their own raiment, may be viewed as the most truly independent and happy.

To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.

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

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.

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.

A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.

If we are to take for the criterion of truth the majority of suffrages, they ought to be gotten from those philosophic and patriotic citizens who cultivate their reason.

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.

The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war.

War contains so much folly, as well as wickedness, that much is to be hoped from the progress of reason.

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men you must first enable the government to control the governed and in the next place oblige it to control itself.