There is no maxim, in my opinion, which is more liable to be misapplied, and which, therefore, more needs elucidation, than the current one, that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong.
JAMES MADISONUnion of religious sentiments begets a surprising confidence.
More James Madison Quotes
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A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce, or a tragedy, or perhaps both.
JAMES MADISON -
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.
JAMES MADISON -
What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?
JAMES MADISON -
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.
JAMES MADISON -
The protection of these faculties is the first object of government.
JAMES MADISON -
The happy Union of these States is a wonder; their Constitution a miracle; their example the hope of Liberty throughout the world.
JAMES MADISON -
The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war.
JAMES MADISON -
A pure democracy is a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person.
JAMES MADISON -
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.
JAMES MADISON -
Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.
JAMES MADISON -
If we are to take for the criterion of truth the majority of suffrages, they ought to be gotten from those philosophic and patriotic citizens who cultivate their reason.
JAMES MADISON -
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 -
Union of religious sentiments begets a surprising confidence.
JAMES MADISON -
The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.
JAMES MADISON -
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.
JAMES MADISON






