James Madison Quotes

The progress of despotism tends to disappoint its own purpose.

Despotism often presents itself as the repairer of all the ills suffered, the support of just rights, defender of the oppressed, and founder of order.

Secrecy is the freedom tyrants dream of.

Tyranny is always better organized than freedom.

... a step in the direction of tyranny.

Absolute power should never be trusted to man. It has perverted the wisest heads, and corrupted the best hearts in the world. I should be afraid to commit my property, liberty and life to a body of angels for one whole year.

A democratic despotism is like a theocracy: it assumes its own correctness.

Under the rule of a repressive whole, liberty can be made into a powerful instrument of domination.

Any excuse will serve a tyrant.

The more complete the despotism, the more smoothly all things move on the surface.

Every tyrant who has lived has believed in freedom for himself.

To assume all the powers is not good for anybody. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. All those experiments have a bad ending.

I have no desire to go in for tyranny or to play the part of King Charles. I hate tyranny in any field of human activity.

Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people.

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.

Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty.

Brutal men with unlimited power are the same all over the world.

I would not like a king who could obey.

It is from weakness that people reach for dictators and concentrated government power. Only the strong can be free. And only the productive can be strong.

... the perfect dictatorship.

I fear that, tired of anarchy, you may hope at the end for a return of oppression and that you may welcome the yoke of the first fortunate adventurer who shows up, who, far from consolidating your destiny, will only prolong your servitude

A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.

In all tyrannical governments the supreme magistracy, or the right both of making and of enforcing the laws, is vested in one and the same man, or one and the same body of men; and whenever these two powers are united together, there can be no public liberty.

One Hundred and Seventy Three Despots would surely be as oppressive as one.

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.