The Personal Website of Mark W. Dawson
My Favorite Quotes of James Madison
James Madison (March 16, 1751[b] – June 28, 1836) was an American statesman, diplomat, expansionist, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the 4th president of the United States from 1809 to 1817. He is hailed as the "Father of the Constitution" for his pivotal role in drafting and promoting the Constitution of the United States and the United States Bill of Rights. He co-wrote The Federalist Papers, co-founded the Democratic-Republican Party, and served as the 5th United States Secretary of State from 1801 to 1809 under President Thomas Jefferson.
Many of his quotes on society and government are apropos to America today. These are some of my favorites:
“[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. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a
people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves
with the power which knowledge gives.”
- James Madison
“A President is impeachable if he attempts to subvert the
Constitution.”
- James Madison
“A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people,
trained in arms, is the best most natural defense of a free
country.”
- James Madison
“Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”
- James Madison
“Crisis is the rallying cry of the tyrant.”
- James Madison
“Disarm the people- that is the best and most effective way to
enslave them.”
- James Madison
“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.”
- James Madison
“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....”
- James Madison
“If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”
- James Madison
“If our nation is ever taken over, it will be taken over from
within.”
- James Madison
“In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not
sufficiently respect the rights of the minority.”
- James Madison
“Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a
wretched situation. No theoretical checks-no form of government
can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will
secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a
chimerical idea, if there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in
the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men.
So that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our
rulers, but in the people who are to choose them.”
- James Madison
“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.”
- James Madison
“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean
to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which
knowledge gives.”
- James Madison
“Oppressors can tyrannize only when they achieve a standing
army, an enslaved press, and a disarmed populace.”
- James Madison
“Pure democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. ” -- James Madison
“Resistance to tyranny is service to God.”
- James Madison
“That is not a just government where arbitrary restrictions,
exemptions, and monopolies deny to part of its citizens that free
use of their faculties, and free choice of their occupations.”
- James Madison
“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and
judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and
whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be
pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”
- James Madison
“The future and success of America is not in this Constitution,
but in the laws of God upon which this Constitution is founded.”
- James Madison
“The means of defense against foreign danger historically have
become the instruments of tyranny at home.”
- James Madison
“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.”
- James Madison
Of government welfare programs, the Congressional Record notes
that James Madison “acknowledged, for his own part, that he could
not undertake to lay his #nger on that article in the Federal
Constitution which granted a right of Congress of expending, on
objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”