James Madison Quotes

“If Men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and the next place, oblige it to control itself.”
― James Madison

“Without Thomas Jefferson and his Declaration of Independence, there would have been no American revolution that announced universal principles of liberty. Without his participation by the side of the unforgettable Marquis de Lafayette, there would have been no French proclamation of The Rights of Man. Without his brilliant negotiation of the Louisiana treaty, there would be no United States of America. Without Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, there would have been no Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom, and no basis for the most precious clause of our most prized element of our imperishable Bill of Rights - the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”
― James Madison, Federalist Papers Nos. 10 and 51

“The Hulk before intermission, Bruce Banner after it.”
― Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter

“Republican theory clearly stated that the people held all political power, and only they could delegate authority to a government. The people were free to change governments at will. They didn't need permission from incumbents.”
― James D. Best, Tempest at Dawn

“...the founders of our nation were nearly all Infidels, and that of the presidents who had thus far been elected {George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, and Andrew Jackson}, not a one had professed a belief in Christianity...

When the war was over and the victory over our enemies won, and the blessings and happiness of liberty and peace were secured, the Constitution was framed and God was neglected. He was not merely forgotten. He was absolutely voted out of the Constitution. The proceedings, as published by Thompson, the secretary, and the history of the day, show that the question was gravely debated whether God should be in the Constitution or not, and after a solemn debate he was deliberately voted out of it.... There is not only in the theory of our government no recognition of God's laws and sovereignty, but its practical operation, its administration, has been conformable to its theory. Those who have been called to administer the government have not been men making any public profession of Christianity... Washington was a man of valor and wisdom. He was esteemed by the whole world as a great and good man; but he was not a professing Christian...

[Sermon by Reverend Bill Wilson (Episcopal) in October 1831, as published in the Albany Daily Advertiser the same month it was made]”
― Bird Wilson

“I regret that I should leave this world without again beholding him.”
― James Monroe

“Unlike Confucius, Madison maintained that people have a limited capacity to control their passions themselves and act virtuously when their individual interests conflict with others.”
― Patrick Mendis, Peaceful War: How the Chinese Dream and the American Destiny Create a New Pacific World Order

“Mr. Henry had without a doubt the greatest power to persuade, [but] Mr. Madison had the great power to convince.”
― Joseph J. Ellis, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789 by Joseph J. Ellis

“...my idea of the sovereignty of the people is, that the people can change the constitution if they please, but while the constitution exists, they must conform themselves to its dictates.' -- JAMES MADISON, August 15, 1789 [during debates over the Bill of Rights]”
― John A. Ragosta, For the People, For the Country: Patrick Henry’s Final Political Battle

“Many years later an acquaintance [Timothy Pickering] recalled [in a letter to John Marshall, dated December 26, 1828] that Patrick Henry once told him 'that he could forgive everything else in Mr. Jefferson, but not his corrupting Mr. Madison.”
― Jon Kukla, Patrick Henry: Champion of Liberty

“A principal theme of the Virginian’s note-taking was the means by which nations slip insidiously into civil war. This happens, Madison records, when political leaders are blinded by impetuosity and overconfidence, at one extreme, or timidity and complacency, at the other. Both sets of traits, he writes, deceive political actors into the fatal belief about incipient disunion and Civil War that “the danger is not real. " As a consequence, rulers either proceed into tumultuous, delicate affairs with a “blind rashness,” which precipitates civil war, or a timorous, self-denying inaction, which fails to prevent it.”
― Eli Merritt, Disunion Among Ourselves: The Perilous Politics of the American Revolution

“James Madison framed the constitutional order so that power would be in the hands of the Senate, which represents “the wealth of the nation,” the “more capable sett of men,” who have respect for property owners and their rights and understand the need for government “to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority”—though it was not long before he came to deplore “the daring depravity of the times,” as the “stockjobbers will become the pretorian band of the government—at once its tools and its tyrant; bribed by its largesses, and overawing it by clamors and combinations” (1792).”
― Noam Chomsky, Hopes and Prospects