James Madison Quotes

If 'extreme' means that I am unwilling to go to Washington, D.C., and do what President Obama tells me, then so be it. But I am certainly not going to Washington, D.C. to represent the interests of D.C. I'm going there to represent Colorado values.

The Federal Constitution forms a happy combination in this respect; the great and aggregate interests being referred to the national, the local and particular, to the state legislatures.

Unlike the United States Congress, which mostly forbids outside employment, state legislatures are generally composed of people with other careers.

The danger in our system is that the general government, which represents the interests of the whole, may encroach on the states, which represent the peculiar and local interests, or that the latter may encroach on the former.

Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests.... Parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole—where not local purpose, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole.

They [Congressmen] may ... consult and prefer the interests of their particular constituents when they come in conflict with any other particular or local interest, yet it is their first or highest duty, as representatives of the United States, to promote the general good.

No man can serve two masters. No man can serve his people and the [party] caucus.

Members of Congress will pay attention to members of their own districts.

There is hardly a member of Congress who can make up his mind to go home without having dispatched at least one speech to his constituents; nor who will endure any interruption until he has introduced into his harangue whatever useful suggestions may be made touching the four-and-twenty States of which the Union is composed, and especially the district which he represents.

Try spending a good chunk of your life as a reformer in the New York State Senate. See how you like it.

I know if that I'm not fighting for my home state, my home district, that other members who are out there fighting for their state, their district, they're not going to fight for New York for me.

What is best for the Beauce is what is best for Canada.

Every decision I make in Congress will be centered on the needs of the district.

A local spirit will infallibly prevail much more in the members of Congress than a national spirit will prevail in the legislatures of the particular States.

I have the highest veneration of those Gentleman, -- but, Sir, give me leave to demand, what right had they to say, We, the People? My political curiosity, exclusive of my anxious solicitude for the public welfare, leads me to ask who authorized them to speak the language of, We, the People, instead of We, the States? States are the characteristics, and the soul of the confederation. If the States be not the agents of this compact, it must be one of great consolidated National Government of the people of all the States.

We have too much legislating by clamor, by tumult, by pressure. Representative government ceases when outside influence of any kind is substituted for the judgment of the representative.

The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic are: first, the delegation of the government, in the latter,to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of citizens and greater sphere of country over which the latter may be extended.

Government is the political representative of a natural equilibrium, of custom, of inertia; it is by no means a representative of reason.

My political curiosity, exclusive of my anxious solicitude for the public welfare, leads me to ask who authorized them (the framers of the Constitution) to speak the language of 'We, the People,' instead of 'We, the States'?

Libertarians should say, 'I love this country too much to take away votes from the Republican'

The system [in U.S.] is designed for a two-party system. And those two parties have an interest in keeping third parties out. There's too much of the structure that works in the two-party way. They will keep the third party out.

There are elements of democracy in votes here and there in America. But in the actual structure of the government, we're a representative republic.

The appointment of senators by the state legislatures . . . is recommended by the double advantage of favoring a select appointment, and of giving to the state governments such an agency in the formation of the federal government, as must secure the authority of the former.

I can tell you this. It is not going to be evenly constituted and when she was Speaker Pelosi, she certainly showed no interests in having an equal number of Republicans and Democrats.

A government regulating itself by what is wise and just for the many, uninfluenced by the local and selfish views of the few who direct their affairs, has not been seen, perhaps, on earth. Or if it existed for a moment at the birth of ours, it would not be easy to fix the term of its continuance. Still, I believe it does exist here in a greater degree than anywhere else; and for its growth and continuance... I offer sincere prayers.