James Madison Quotes

But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external controls nor internal controls on government would be necessary.

Since the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to allow them liberty, how comes it to pass that the tendencies of organizers are always good?

If human beings are fundamentally good, no government is necessary; if they are fundamentally bad, any government, being composed of human beings, would be bad also.

It is the knowledge that all men have weaknesses and that many have vices that makes government necessary.

Government is a necessary evil

Who so taketh in hand to frame any state or government ought to presuppose that all men are evil, and at occasions will show themselves so to be.

Where there is no common power, there is no law

Where government is impossible, politics is impossible.

Men can never escape being governed. Either they must govern themselves or they must submit to being governed by others.

The measure of the state's success is that the word anarchy frightens people, while the word state does not.

Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint.

What is government itself but the great reflection of human nature.

One must be stark mad, to believe that mankind can subsist without magistrates.

It is not possible to assume that a world carried on by division of labor and authority, can be governed by universal opinions in the whole population.

All histories do shew, and wise politicians do hold it necessary that, for the well-governing of every Commonweal, it behoveth man to presuppose that all men are evil, and will declare themselves so to be when occasion is offered.

To people in virtually any age before our own, the only argument that mattered was between extremely small government and no government at all. Extremely small government meant there was at least some law and order; no government meant that there was not.

In the supreme struggle of social order against anarchy, we cannot deny to the champions of civilized society the moral latitude which is by common consent accorded to armed men fighting for their country against a foreign foe.

There never was a government without force.... A governement leaving it to a man to do his duty, or not, as he pleases, would be a new species of government, or rather no government at all.

[D]emocracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man's life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few.

Be it or be it not true that Man is shapen in iniquity and conceived in sin, it is unquestionably true that Government is begotten of aggression, and by aggression.

Justice remains the greatest power on earth. To that tremendous power alone will we submit.

Anarchism misunderstands the real nature of man. It would be practicable only in a world of angels and saints

Does it seem to you impossible to imagine anything more inextricable than the social contract, when you think of the frightful number of relations that it must regulate -- something like squaring the circle, or finding perpetual motion? That is the reason why, wearied of the struggle, you fall back on absolutism and force.

Democracy is morose, and runs to anarchy, but in the state, and in the schools, it is indispensable to resist the consolidation ofall men into a few men.

When we ask for the abolition of the State and its organs we are always told that we dream of a society composed of men better than they are in reality. But no; a thousand times, no. All we ask is that men should not be made worse than they are, by such institutions!