“For History ought not to depart from the truth, and the truth is all the praise that virtuous actions need.”

The Dignity and Importance of History http://www.dartmouth.edu/~dwebster/speeches/dignity-history.html (23 February 1852)

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 133.

Section 9 : Ethical Outlook
Founding Address (1876), Life and Destiny (1913)
Context: There may be, and there ought to be, progress in the moral sphere. The moral truths which we have inherited from the past need to be expanded and restated. In times of misfortune we require for our support something of which the truth is beyond all question, in which we can put an implicit trust, " though the heavens should fall." A merely borrowed belief is, at such time, like a rotten plank across a raging torrent. The moment we step upon it, it gives way beneath our feet.

An Old Man's Thoughts on Many Things, Of Education I

Source: Reasons and Persons (1984), p. 619

As paraphrased in The Great Quotations‎ (1960) by George Seldes, p. 460; this paraphrase has for some time become the most widely quoted form of Madison's statement.
1780s, The Debates in the Federal Convention (1787)

Essay, written under the pseudonym "Candidus," in The Boston Gazette (14 October 1771) http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2092, later published in The Life and Public Services of Samuel Adams (1865) by William Vincent Wells, p. 425

IV, 20
Source: Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book IV