James Madison Quotes

In our Governments, the real power lies in the majority of the Community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from the acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the constituents.

Our Founding Fathers created the United States Senate for the purpose of protecting the rights of the minority.

The principles governing Western democracies, of which Israel rightly considers itself a part, are based on the assurance that everyone has a vote, but also that the minority needs to yield to the wishes of the majority.

The Founding Fathers worried that 'some common impulse of passion' might lead many to subvert the rights of the few. It's a rational fear, one that is played out endlessly.

A government of, by and for the people is obligated to conduct the nation's business in a manner that respects dissent.

Wherever the real power in a government lies, there is the danger of oppression. In our Government the real power lies in the majority of the community.

The great advantage of representatives is their capacity of discussing public affairs. For this, the people collectively are extremely unfit, which is one of the chief inconveniences of a democracy.

51 percent of the people should not always get 100% of the power; 51 percent of the people should certainly not get all the power if they use that power to exclude the 49%. In that case, we do not have majority rule. We have majority tyranny.

In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority.

Decision making in a democracy depends above all on knowledge and not just the intel available to presidents and policymakers.

How can this full, perfect, just and supreme voice of the people, embodied in the Constitution, be brought to bear, habitually and steadily, in counteracting the fatal tendency of the government to the absolute and despotic control of the numerical majority?

Our constitution got built around the idea of minority protection.

A dissenting minority feels free only when it can impose its will on the majority: what it abominates most is the dissent of the majority.

Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.

By what principle of original right is it that one-fiftieth or one-ninetieth of a great nation, by calling themselves a State, have the right to break up and ruin that nation as a matter of original principle?

Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.

You can not possibly have a broader basis for government than that which includes all the people, with all their rights in their hands, and with an equal power to maintain their rights.

One great object of the Constitution was to restrain majorities from oppressing minorities or encroaching upon their just rights.

The United States Senate wasn't designed to be a majority-rule institution. It was designed to include and accommodate the rights of the minority in small states as well as large states.

A pure democracy can admit no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will be felt by a majority, and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party

It’s very basic in the Bill of Rights, he says. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, whether the majority agrees with them or not. Rights are in some sense anti-democratic; to trumpet democracy as the all-important value is to denigrate them.”

The freedom to persuade and suggest is the essence of the democratic process.

The notion that a person's constitutional rights may be subject to a majority vote is itself anathema.

The Supreme Court is the living voice of the Constitution—that is, of the will of the people expressed in the fundamental law they have enacted. It is ... the conscience of the people.... It is the guarantee of the minority who, when threatened by the impatient vehemence of the majority, can appeal to this permanent law, finding the interpreter and enforcer thereof in a Court set high above the assaults of faction.

[We] must come to understand what it means to be a member of the minority or other small partner people, and to be ready to give that minority assurances which are necessary for a majority..