Quotes from James Madison

The legislative department is everywhere extending the sphere of its activity and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex.

Resistance to tyranny is service to God.

It may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more constant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves.

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.

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.

Americans need not fear the federal government because they enjoy the advantage of being armed, which you possess over the people of almost every other nation.

Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.

The problem to be solved is, not what form of government is perfect, but which of the forms is least imperfect.

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

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.

Among the numerous advantages promised by a well-constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction.

What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?

Religion flourishes in greater purity, without than with the aid of Government.

A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.

Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression.

The ultimate authority resides in the people, and that if the federal government got too powerful and overstepped its authority, then the people would develop plans of resistance and resort to arms.

Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just Government instituted to secure & perpetuate it needs them not.

Public opinion sets bounds to every government, and is the real sovereign in every free one.

A just government has no need for the clergy or the church.

Democracy is the most vile form of government.

The powers of the federal government ... result from the compact to which the states are parties, [and are] limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting that compact.

In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority.

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.

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