Founder's Quote Database | The Patriot Post

Founders' Quote Database

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James Madison

Speech at the Virginia Convention — 1829
Category: Rights

It is sufficiently obvious, that persons and property are the two great subjects on which Governments are to act; and that the rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted. These rights cannot well be separated.

James Madison

letter to Thomas Jefferson — 1788
Category: Rights

The invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the Constituents.

James Madison

letter to Thomas Jefferson — 1787
Category: Senate

In forming the Senate, the great anchor of the Government, the questions as they came within the first object turned mostly on the mode of appointment, and the duration of it.

James Madison

speech in the Congress of the United States — 1789
Category: Separation of Powers

I acknowledge, in the ordinary course of government, that the exposition of the laws and Constitution devolves upon the judicial. But I beg to know upon what principle it can be contended that any one department draws from the Constitution greater powers than another in marking out the limits of the powers of the several departments.

James Madison

Federalist No. 48 — 1788
Category: Separation of Powers

An elective despotism was not the government we fought for; but one in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among the several bodies of magistracy as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.

James Madison

speech at the Constitutional Convention — 1787
Category: Slavery

We have seen the mere distinction of color made in the most enlightened period of time, a ground of the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man.

James Madison

speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention — 1829
Category: Slavery

It is due to justice; due to humanity; due to truth; to the sympathies of our nature; in fine, to our character as a people, both abroad and at home, that they should be considered, as much as possible, in the light of human beings, and not as mere property. As such, they are acted upon by our laws, and have an interest in our laws.

James Madison

on Thomas Jefferson in a letter to Samuel Harrison Smith — 1826
Category: Founders on Founders

He was certainly one of the most learned men of the age. It may be said of him as has been said of others that he was a "walking Library," and what can be said of but few such prodigies, that the Genius of Philosophy ever walked hand in hand with him.

James Madison

Essay on Property — 1792
Category: Taxation

A just security to property is not afforded by that government, under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species.

James Madison

Federalist No. 10 — 1787
Category: Taxation

The apportionment of taxes on the various descriptions of property is an act which seems to require the most exact impartiality; yet there is, perhaps, no legislative act in which greater opportunity and temptation are given to a predominant party to trample on the rules of justice. Every shilling which they overburden the inferior number is a shilling saved to their own pockets.

Alexander Hamilton and James Madison

Federalist No. 20 — 1787
Category: Truth

Experience is the oracle of truth; and where its responses are unequivocal, they ought to be conclusive and sacred.

James Madison

speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention — 1788
Category: Bureaucracy

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.

James Madison

speech at the Virginia Ratifying Convention — 1788
Category: Virtue

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

in response to Washington's first Inaugural address — 1789
Category: Justice

If individuals be not influenced by moral principles; it is in vain to look for public virtue; it is, therefore, the duty of legislators to enforce, both by precept and example, the utility, as well as the necessity of a strict adherence to the rules of distributive justice.

James Madison

speech in the House of Representatives — 1794
Category: Poverty

[T]he government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.

James Madison

responding to his niece asking what was wrong — 1836
Category: Last Words

Nothing more than a change of mind, my dear.

James Madison

Federalist No. 55 — 1788
Category: Human Nature

As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust: So there are other qualities in human nature, which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence. Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form. Were the pictures which have been drawn by the political jealousy of some among us, faithful likenesses of the human character, the inference would be that there is not sufficient virtue among men for self-government; and that nothing less than the chains of despotism can restrain them from destroying and devouring one another.

James Madison

Federalist No. 39 — 1788
Category: Federalism

Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act. In this relation, then, the new Constitution will, if established, be a FEDERAL, and not a NATIONAL constitution.

James Madison

Federalist No. 45
Category: Politics and Parties

We have heard of the impious doctrine in the old world, that the people were made for kings, not kings for the people. Is the same doctrine to be revived in the new, in another shape - that the solid happiness of the people is to be sacrificed to the views of political institutions of a different form? It is too early for politicians to presume on our forgetting that the public good, the real welfare of the great body of the people, is the supreme object to be pursued; and that no form of government whatever has any other value than as it may be fitted for the attainment of this object.

James Madison

Federalist No. 46 — 1788
Category: Congress

A local spirit will infallibly prevail much more in the members of Congress than a national spirit will prevail in the legislatures of the particular States.

James Madison

Federalist No. 63
Category: Senate

Such an institution may be sometimes necessary as a defense to the people against their own temporary errors and delusions.

James Madison

Federalist No. 46 — 1788
Category: Congress

For the same reason that the members of the State legislatures will be unlikely to attach themselves sufficiently to national objects, the members of the federal legislature will be likely to attach themselves too much to local objects.

James Madison

Federalist No. 46 — 1788
Category: Arms

Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of.

James Madison

Federalist No. 48 — 1788
Category: Separation of Powers

No political truth is certainly of greater intrinsic value, or is stamped with the authority of more enlightened patrons of liberty than that on which the objection is founded. The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.

James Madison

Federalist No. 48 — 1788
Category: Separation of Powers

[I]n the next place, to show that unless these departments be so far connected and blended as to give to each a constitutional control over the others, the degree of separation which the maxim requires, as essential to a free government, can never in practice be duly maintained.

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