James Madison Quotes

As for us BRITONS, thank Heaven, we have a better Sense of Government deliver’d to us from our Ancestors. We have the Notion of A PUBLIC and A CONSTITUTION; how a Legislative, and how an Executive is model’d.

The President ... should be merely the executor of a power of decision that rests elsewhere; that is, in the Congress.

Whether ours shall be a government of laws and not of men is now for Congress and ultimately the American people.

There is a difference between constitutional government and judicial dictatorship, and I think it's time we remembered that our Constitution was not put together in order to establish the sovereignty of the judges, it was framed in order to guarantee the sovereignty of the people.

The constitution is the ultimate custodian of social will and its making should be accorded all due diligence.

A constitution, in the American sense of the word, is a written instrument by which the fundamental powers of the government are established, limited, and defined, and by which these powers are distributed among several departments, for their more safe and useful exercise, for the benefit of the body politic.

But Connecticut and Rhode Island have originally realized the most perfect polity as to a legislature.

Being 'at the mercy of legislative majorities' is merely another way of describing the basic American plan: representative democracy.

The only legitimate right to govern is an express grant of power from the governed.

A good constitution is infinitely better than the best despot.

Do you think states' rights would have disappeared if state legislatures still elected our United States senators? Do you think our United States senators would be difficult to contact if they were named by our state legislatures?

The United States is dangerously close to becoming a democracy instead of a republic.

The federal constitution is perhaps the greatest of human experiments.

Our American concept of government rests on the idea of a dominant Congress.

… courts do not substitute their social and economic beliefs for the judgment of legislative bodies, who are elected to pass laws

Whatever the People has last ordained shall be held as binding by law.

In the government of this Commonwealth, the legislative department shall never exercise the executive and judicial powers, or either of them: The executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them: The judicial shall never exercise the legislative and executive powers, or either of them: to the end it may be a government of laws and not of men.

… the people as the fourth branch of government

Sure the people are stupid: the human race is stupid. Sure Congress is an inefficient instrument of government. But the people are not stupid enough to abandon representative government for any other kind, including government by the guy who knows.

The legislative body possesses with us a great advantage over that of those countries where it may be adjourned or dissolved at the pleasure of the executive authority. It is self-moving and self-dependent. Although it may be convened by the executive, it cannot be adjourned or dissolved by it.

Shall the majority govern or be governed? Shall the nation rule or be ruled? Shall the general will prevail, or the will of a faction? Shall there be government or no government?

The actual form of our present government is simply a scheme of Congressional supremacy.

The Congress plays a central role in our constitutional structure.

When it comes to the separation of powers, the Constitution makes it look pretty simple: Congress makes the laws, the president enforces them and the judiciary adjudicates them. In reality, though, the lines between the branches are a little blurrier than they seem on paper.

We are sworn to uphold the Constitution and law. And it has to be consistent and agreed upon with three branches of government - one can't overrule the other two.