James Madison Quotes

Philosophy is common sense with big words.

Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind, and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.

[Letter to William Bradford Jr. April 1 1774]

The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.

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 in blood for centuries.

[Letter objecting to the use of government land for churches, 1803]

Every new and successful example, therefore, of a perfect separation between the ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance; 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.

I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

The means of defence agst. foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home.

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.

Where we see the same faults followed regularly by the same misfortunes, we may reasonably think that if we could have known the first we might have avoided the others.

A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

In framing a government, which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty is this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.

Liberty is to faction what air is to fire...

La más común y duradera fuente de fraccionamiento ha sido la variada y desigual distribución de la propiedad