612 Quotes by James Madison

The apportionment of taxes on the various descriptions of property is an act which seems to require the most exact impartiality; yet there is, perhaps, no legislative act in which greater opportunity and temptation are given to a predominant party to trample on the rules of justice. Every shilling which they overburden the inferior number is a shilling saved to their own pockets.

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

The President is responsible to the public for the conduct of the person he has nominated and appointed.

The legislative department is everywhere extending the sphere of its activity and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex.

The rights of man as the foundation of just Government had been long understood but the superstructures projected had been sadly defective

How could a readiness for war in time of peace be safely prohibited, unless we could prohibit, in like manner, the preparations and establishments of every hostile nation?

No man can be a competent legislator who does not add to an upright intention and a sound judgment a certain degree of knowledge of the subject on which he is to legislate.

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 members of the legislative department . . . are numerous. They are distributed and dwell among the people at large. Their connections of blood, of friendship, and of acquaintance embrace a great proportion of the most influential part of the society . . . they are more immediately the confidential guardians of their rights and liberties.