James Madison Quotes

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

In republics the executive must be strongest because everything conspires against it, while in monarchies the legislature must be strongest, because everything conspires in favour of the monarch

One reason the Founding Fathers thought that states should have two senators was so that smaller states wouldn't get run over and could bring their interests to the attention of the Senate more broadly.

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?

You are apprehensive of monarchy; I of aristocracy. I would therefore have given more power to the President and less to the Senate.

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

On form of government, there should be checks and balances, and PM should be responsible to Parliament.

The founding leaders of our country believed in a three-part sharing of governmental power, with each branch jealously watching the actions of the other two.

It matters enormously to a successful democratic society like ours that we have three branches of government, each with some independence and some control over the other two. That's set out in the Constitution.

What I worry about would be that you essentially have two chambers, the House and the Senate, but you have simply, majoritarian, absolute power on either side. And that's just not what the founders intended.

The Congress is getting too powerful.

Our government is composed of checks …

It was evidently necessary to infuse a greater portion of strength into the national government. But Congress were but a single body, with whom it was dangerous to lodge additional powers. Hence arose the necessity of a different organization. In order to form some balance, the departments of government were separated, and as a necessary check, the legislative body was composed of two branches. Steadiness and wisdom are better insured when there is a second branch, to balance and check the first The stability of the laws will be greater when the popular branch, which might be influenced by local views, or the violence of party, is checked by another, whose longer continuance in office will render them more experienced, more temperate, and more competent to decide rightly.

A Popular Assembly without a Senate cannot be wise. A Senate without a Popular Assembly will not be honest.

The Senate, in my poor opinion, is little if any check, either on the President or the House of Representatives. It has not the disposition. The members of both Houses are creatures, which, though differently born, are begotten in the same way and by the same sire. They have of course the same temper. But their opposition, were they disposed to make any, would be feeble. They would easily be borne down by the other House, in which the power resides. The President can indeed do what he pleases, provided always it shall please him to please those, who lead a majority of the Representatives.

As the House is designed to provide a reflection of the mood of the moment, the Senate is meant to reflect the continuity of the past—to preserve the delicate balance of justice between the majority’s whims and the minority’s rights.

The Founders were far more concerned about checking Congress than the States

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.

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

You cannot choose between party government and Parliamentary government. I say, you can have no Parliamentary government if you have no party government; and, therefore, when Gentlemen denounce party government, they strike at that scheme of government which, in my opinion, has made this country great, and which I hope will keep it great.

The framers of our Constitution came up with two major contributions to the art of government. The first was the idea of an executive not dependent on the political support of the legislature. The second was the idea of the judiciary independent of the executive and legislative branches.

The Constitutional framework of checks and balances matters.

I think the founding fathers, in their genius, created a system of three co-equal branches of government and a built-in system of checks and balances.

Every once in a while, the Senate seems to remember that it belongs to a coequal branch.

The Congress plays a central role in our constitutional structure.