James Madison Quotes

Emperor Napoleon is nothing but an ordinary king who tramples on human rights.

Enlightened despots are mythical creatures; real despots seem more interested in stealing money or installing their sons after them.

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

This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.

Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.

... all of our human experience shows that no one with absolute power can be trusted to give it up even in part.

In domestic as in political tyranny, the case of absolute monsters chiefly illustrates the institution by showing that there is scarcely any horror which may not occur under it if the despot pleases

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

If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him in absolute power, within a year he would be worse than the Tsar himself.

Despotism sits nowhere so secure as under the effigy and ensigns of freedom.

Absolute power turns its possessors not into a God but an anti-God. For God turned clay into men, while the absolute despot turns men into clay.

Despotism is unjust to everybody, including the despot, who was probably made for better things.

The concentrating of powers in the same hands is precisely the definition of despotic government. It will be no alleviation that these powers will be exercised by a plurality of hands, and not by a single one.

Despotism increases in severity with the number of despots; the responsibility is more divided, and the claims are more numerous.

Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy.

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

Excessive dealings with tyrants are not good for the security of free states.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.

You look at the greatest villains in human history, the fascists, the autocrats, they all wanted people to kneel before them because they don't love themselves enough.

How dangerous emperors are when they go mad.

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

A state is not a state if it belongs to one man.

Despotism isn't nearly as bad as it's cracked up to be.

All executive power --- from the reign of ancient kings to the rule of modern dictators --- has the outward appearance of efficiency

Napoleon is a dangerous man in a free country. He seems tome to have the makings of a tyrant, and I believe that were he to be king he would be fully capable of playing such a part, and his name would become an object of detestation to posterity...