James Madison Jr Quotes

• Measures should be enacted which, without violating the rights of property, would reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity, and raise extreme indigence towards a state of comfort.

  James Madison Jr

• In all great changes of established governments, forms ought to give way to substance.

  James Madison Jr

  Tags in Government

• Respect for character is always diminished in proportion to the number among whom the blame or praise is to be divided.

  James Madison Jr

  Topics in Respect

• Precedents once established are so much positive power.

  James Madison Jr

• Another of my wishes is to depend as little as possible on the labor of slaves.

  James Madison Jr

  Tags in Slavery

• Such 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 Jr

• A good government implies two things: fidelity to the object of government, which is the happiness of the people; secondly, a knowledge of the means by which that object can be best attained.

  James Madison Jr

  Topics in Knowledge

  Tags in Government, Fidelity

• 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 Jr

  Topics in Country

  Tags in Defense

• A pure democracy is a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person.

  James Madison Jr

• I go on the principle that a public debt is a public curse, and in a Republican Government a greater curse than any other.

  James Madison Jr

• Our opinions agree as to the evil, moral, political, and economical, of slavery.

  James Madison Jr

• The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to an uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government.

  James Madison Jr

• The distinction between liberty and licentiousness is a repetition of the Protean doctrine of implication, which is ever ready to work its ends by varying its shape.

  James Madison Jr

• Keep within the requisite limits a standing military force, always remembering that an armed and trained militia is the firmest bulwark of republics – that without standing armies their liberty can never be in danger, nor with large ones safe.

  James Madison Jr

• On a candid examination of history, we shall find that turbulence, violence, and abuse of power, by the majority, trampling on the rights of the minority, have produced factions and commotions which, in republics, have, more frequently than any other.

  James Madison Jr

  Topics in History

• The safety and happiness of society are the objects at which all political institutions aim, and to which all such institutions must be sacrificed.

  James Madison Jr

  Topics in Society

  Tags in Safety

• We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.

  James Madison Jr

• Union of religious sentiments begets a surprising confidence.

  James Madison Jr

  Topics in Religion

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

  James Madison Jr

• Each generation should be made to bear the burden of its own wars, instead of carrying them on, at the expense of other generations.

  James Madison Jr

  Tags in Generations

James Madison Jr (79)

Birth:	16th March, 1751
Death:	28th June, 1836
Nationality:	American
Profession:	President

About

James Madison Jr. was born in Port Conway, Virginia, USA. He was an American politician and Founding Father who served as the fourth 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 United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights. He studied at Princeton University. He served as a U.S. House of Representatives from Virginia(1789-1797), and a United States Secretary of State from 1801-1809.

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