James Madison Quotes About Affairs

Quotes about: Affairs

• The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation and foreign commerce. ... The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives and liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement and prosperity of the State.

  James Madison

  War, Government, Order

• The management of foreign relations appears to be the most susceptible of abuse of all the trusts committed to a Government, because they can be concealed or disclosed, or disclosed in such parts and at such times as will best suit particular views; and because the body of the people are less capable of judging, and are more under the influence of prejudices, on that branch of their affairs, than of any other. Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.

  James Madison

  Real, Home, Loss

  James Madison, David B. Mattern (1997). “James Madison's "Advice to My Country"”, p.49, University of Virginia Press

• It is a misfortune, inseparable from human affairs, that public measures are rarely investigated with that spirit of moderation which is essential to a just estimate of their real tendency to advance or obstruct the public good; and that this spirit is more apt to be diminished than prompted, by those occasions which require an unusual exercise of it.

  James Madison

  Real, Exercise, Essentials

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (2003). “The Federalist: With Letters of Brutus”, p.168, Cambridge University Press

• This policy of supplying by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives, might be traced through the whole system of human affairs, both private and public.

  James Madison

  Opposites, Rivals, Might

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (1852). “The Federalist, on the New Constitution, Written in 1788”, p.240

• Every nation whose affairs betray a want of wisdom and stability may calculate on every loss which can be sustained from the more systematic policy of its wiser neighbors.

  James Madison

  Loss, Liberty, May

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (1852). “The Federalist, on the New Constitution, Written in 1788”, p.287

• The public affairs of the union are spread throughout a very extensive region, and are extremely diversified by the local affairs connected with them, and can with difficulty be learnt in any other place, than in the central councils, to which a knowledge of them will be brought by the representatives of every part of the empire. Yet some knowledge of the affairs, and even of the laws of all the states, ought to be possessed by the members from each of the states.

  James Madison

  Law, Federalism, Unions

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (2012). “Selected Federalist Papers”, p.127, Courier Corporation

• We may be assured by past experience, that such a practice [as some states charging high taxes on goods from other states] would be introduced by future contrivances; and both by that and a common knowledge of human affairs, that it would nourish unceasing animosities, and not improbably terminate in serious interruptions of the public tranquility.

  James Madison

  Past, Government, Practice

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