Quotes by James Madison

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

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

All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.

And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.

By rendering the labor of one, the property of the other, they cherish pride, luxury, and vanity on one side; on the other, vice and servility, or hatred and revolt.

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.

Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government.

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.

In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority.

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