Top 73 Quotes by James Madison

Let me recommend the best medicine in the world: a long journey, at a mild season, through a pleasant country, in easy stages.

Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.

The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries.

The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.

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

War contains so much folly, as well as wickedness, that much is to be hoped from the progress of reason.

The happy Union of these States is a wonder; their Constitution a miracle; their example the hope of Liberty throughout the world.

Despotism can only exist in darkness, and there are too many lights now in the political firmament to permit it to remain anywhere, as it has heretofore done, almost everywhere.

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.

Wherever there is interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done.