James Madison Quotes

There are elements of democracy in votes here and there in America. But in the actual structure of the government, we're a representative republic.

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

We can't have a referendum on every important question. This is a republic, not a democracy. This is Chicago, not California.

The beauty of our democracy is that the final authority is not the president of the United States, but instead the American public through their duly elected representatives in the United States Congress.

Elected representatives are so embedded in the basic notion of what constitutes a democratic nation that it has become indistinguishable from any other form of democratic governance.

The great constitutional corrective in the hands of the people against usurpation of power, or corruption by their agents is the right of suffrage; and this when used with calmness and deliberation will prove strong enough.

Government is not a bottom line enterprise. You can get yourself elected ... but you can't fire the legislature if they won't do what you want.

A government is not in power. It is in office, put there by the will of the people.

If you ever doubt that the people are the boss in a democracy, run for office. Even the President is a hired hand.

The founding fathers set up this country as a republic—not a democracy.

The king, in possession of the throne, was the sole representative of sovereignty, the sole representative of power. Not so in a Republic … Here we have no sole representative of power. The ballot box is the instrumentality through which the sovereign power is exercised.

Fierce nomination fights have been going on since the early days of the Republic …. The founding fathers wanted to avoid a monarchy and instead created anarchy.

I'm going to support the candidate that the voters chose. The voters get to choose who's best to represent them.

If democracy is such a good thing, let's have more of it.

The future of this republic is in the hands of the American voter.

Democracy, republics: What do these words signify?

A republican form of government, without intelligence in the people, must be, on a vast scale, what a mad-house, without superintendent or keepers, would be on a small one.

There's a big difference in a representative republic and a democracy. We do not have a democracy in America.

Well, that's the way democracy works. We have to build this Europe with the material we have at our disposal. And this material is national democracy.

I think that the voters should choose the elected officials, not the elected officials choose the voters.

That fatal drollery called a representative government.

We're not perfect, but we do have democracy.

The transformation of the United States from a traditional republic to a democratic nation run in large measure by a single executive took a couple of hundred years.

I know people don't like America very much, but the one thing it's very good on is local government.

Decisions taken by the most democratic institutions in the world are very often wrong.