Quotes About Alexander Hamilton

#1. The love for our native land strengthens our individual and national character.

Alexander Hamilton

#2. A struggle for liberty is in itself respectable and glorious ... When conducted with magnanimity, justice and humanity, it ought to command the admiration of every friend to human nature. But if sullied by crimes and extravagancies, it loses its respectability.

Alexander Hamilton

#3. In this distribution of powers the wisdom of our constitution is manifested. It is the province and duty of the Executive to preserve to the Nation the blessings of peace. The Legislature alone can interrupt those blessings, by placing the Nation in a state of War.

Alexander Hamilton

#4. Though a wide ocean separates the United States from Europe, yet there are various considerations that warn us against an excess of confidence or security.

Alexander Hamilton

#5. Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.

Alexander Hamilton

#6. All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. the first are the rich and well-born, the other the mass of the people

Alexander Hamilton

#7. The laws of Congress are restricted to a certain sphere, and when they depart from this sphere, they are no longer supreme or binding.

Alexander Hamilton

#8. It may safely be received as an axiom in our political system, that the state governments will in all possible contingencies afford complete security against invasions of the public liberty by the national authority.

Alexander Hamilton

#9. It has been observed, [that for the federal government] to coerce the States is one of the maddest projects that was ever devised.

Alexander Hamilton

#10. On opening night, standing under the Rogers's marquee, [Lin] realized that if Eliza's struggle was the element of Hamilton's story that had inspired him the most, then the show itself was a part of her legacy.

Jeremy McCarter

#11. It is far more rational to suppose that the courts were designed to be an intermediate body between the people and the legislature, in order, among other things, to keep the latter within the limits assigned to their authority.

Alexander Hamilton

#12. Men are reasoning rather than reasonable animals.

Alexander Hamilton

#13. The obscurity is more often in the passions and prejudices of the reasoner than in the subject.

Alexander Hamilton

#14. [S]ound policy condemns the practice of accumulating debts.

Alexander Hamilton

#15. It is evident from the state of the country, from the habits of the people, from the experience we have had on the point itself, that it is impracticable to raise any very considerable sums by direct taxation.

Alexander Hamilton

#16. The United States established itself as a trustworthy new nation in its first two decades after the Revolutionary War by paying its debts, even when many in the country believed it had no obligation to do so. Alexander Hamilton, the founder of this newspaper, insisted on it.

John Podhoretz

#17. [V]igor of government is essential to the security of liberty ...

Alexander Hamilton

#18. But this is a thing more ardently to be wished than seriously to be expected.

Alexander Hamilton

#19. If there are such things as political axioms, the propriety of the judicial power of a government being co-extensive with its legislative, may be ranked among the number.

Alexander Hamilton

#20. Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of man will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.

Alexander Hamilton

#21. As Alexander Hamilton said in 'The Federalist Papers,' law is about the exercise of judgment and not will. Judicial activism is best understood as substituting judicial opinion for the command of law. The law is not an infinitely malleable tool.

Edwin Meese

#22. [Alexander] Hamilton estimated portrait painters as thieves of time.

Gertrude Atherton

#23. The voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God; and, however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true to fact. The people are turbulent and changing, they seldom judge or determine right.

Alexander Hamilton

#24. The multitude ... have not a sufficient stock of reason and knowledge to guide them ... It is not safe to trust to the virtue of any people.

Alexander Hamilton

#25. Self-preservation is the first principle of our nature.

Alexander Hamilton

#26. Its objects are CONTRACTS with foreign nations which have the force of law, but derive it from the obligations of good faith.

Alexander Hamilton

#27. The Convention probably foresaw what it has been a principal aim of these papers to inculcate that the danger which most threatens our political welfare is, that the state governments will finally sap the foundations of the Union.

Alexander Hamilton

#28. Happy will it be if our choice should be directed by a judicious estimate of our true interests, unperplexed and unbiased by considerations not connected with the public good.

Alexander Hamilton

#29. It is a just observation that the people commonly intend the Public Good. This often applies to their very errors. But their good sense would despise the adulator who should pretend they always reason right about the means of promoting it.

Alexander Hamilton

#30. The natural cure for an ill-administration, in a popular or representative constitution, is a change of men.

Alexander Hamilton

#31. Jurors should acquit, even against the judge's instruction ... if exercising their judgment with discretion and honesty they have a clear conviction the charge of the court is wrong.

Alexander Hamilton

#32. It is the Press which has corrupted our political morals - and it is to the Press we must look for the means of our political regeneration.

Alexander Hamilton

#33. On August 26 the Assembly responded by conferring French citizenship upon Joseph Priestley, Jeremy Bentham, William Wilberforce, Anacharsis Cloots, Johann Pestalozzi, Thaddeus Kosciusko, Friedrich Schiller, George Washington, Thomas Paine, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton.

Will Durant

#34. In proportion as I discover the worthlessness of other pursuits, the value of my Eliza and of domestic happiness rises in my estimation.

Alexander Hamilton

#35. There is one transcendant advantage belonging to the province of the State governments ... -I mean the ordinary administration of criminal and civil justice.

Alexander Hamilton

#36. The natural effect of low interest is to increase trade and industry; because undertakings of every kind can be prosecuted with greater advantage.

Alexander Hamilton

#37. Common interest may always be reckoned upon as the surest bond of sympathy.

Alexander Hamilton

#38. The injury which may possibly be done by defeating a few good laws, will be amply compensated by the advantage of preventing a number of bad ones.

Alexander Hamilton

#39. To look for a continuation in harmony between a number of independent unconnected sovereignties, situated in the same neighborhood, would be to disregard the uniform course of human events, and to set at defiance the accumulated experience of ages.

Alexander Hamilton

#40. While the constitution continues to be read, and its principles known, the states, must, by every rational man, be considered as essential component parts of the union; and therefore the idea of sacrificing the former to the latter is totally inadmissible.

Alexander Hamilton

#41. The power of creating new funds upon new objects of taxation, by its own authority, would enable the national government to borrow as far as its necessities might require.

Alexander Hamilton

#42. An enlightened zeal for the energy and efficiency of government will be stigmatized, as the offspring of a temper fond of despotic power, and hostile to the principles of liberty.

Alexander Hamilton

#43. Experience teaches, that men are often so much governed by what they are accustomed to see and practice, that the simplest and most obvious improvements ... are adopted with hesitation, reluctance, and slow gradations.

Alexander Hamilton

#44. The honor of a nation is its life.

Alexander Hamilton

#45. Unless your government is respectable, foreigners will invade your rights; and to maintain tranquillity, it must be respectable - even to observe neutrality, you must have a strong government.

Alexander Hamilton

#46. Nobody expects to trust his body overmuch after the age of fifty.

Alexander Hamilton

#47. Now, mark my words. So long as we are a young and virtuous people, this instument will bind us together in mutual interests, mutual welfare, and mutual happiness. But when we become old and corrupt, it will bind no longer.

Alexander Hamilton

#48. the inducements of philanthropy to those of patriotism,

Alexander Hamilton

#49. Alexander Hamilton, of New York, a signer of the Constitution, was a member of the ratifying convention in his state and did more than any other member to wring the approval of the new instrument from delegates practically instructed by their constituents to vote against it.

Charles A. Beard

#50. In the main it will be found that a power over a man's support (salary) is a power over his will.

Alexander Hamilton

#51. No man in his senses can hesitate in choosing to be free, rather than a slave.

Alexander Hamilton

#52. These powers ought to exist without limitation, because it is impossible to foresee or to define the extent and variety of national exigencies, and the correspondent extent and variety of the means which may be necessary to satisfy them.

Alexander Hamilton

#53. It is a singular capriciousness of the human mind, that after all the admonitions we have had from experience on this head, there should still be found men, who object to the new constitution for deviating from a principle which has been found the bane of the old.

Alexander Hamilton

#54. If mankind were to resolve to agree in no institution of government, until every part of it had been adjusted to the most exact standard of perfection, society would soon become a general scene of anarchy, and the world a desert.

Alexander Hamilton

#55. The laws of certain states ... give an ownership in the service of Negroes as personal property ... But being men, by the laws of God and nature, they were capable of acquiring liberty - and when the captor in war ... thought fit to give them liberty, the gift was not only valid, but irrevocable.

Alexander Hamilton

#56. As on the one hand, the necessity for borrowing in particular emergencies cannot be doubted, so on the other, it is equally evident that to be able to borrow upon good terms, it is essential that the credit of a nation should be well established.

Alexander Hamilton

#57. The prosperity of commerce is now perceived and acknowledged by all enlightened statesmen to be the most useful as well as the most productive source of national wealth, and has accordingly become a primary object of their political cares.

Alexander Hamilton

#58. The rights of neutrality will only be respected when they are defended by an adequate power. A nation, despicable by its weakness, forfeits even the privilege of being neutral.

Alexander Hamilton

#59. Alexander Hamilton realized that warfare was part and parcel of human nature, and it's something we had to prepare for.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

#60. The variety of more minute interests, which will necessarily fall under the superintendence of the local administrations ... cannot be particularized without involving a detail too tedious and uninteresting to compensate for the instruction it might afford.

Alexander Hamilton

#61. A nation has a right to manage its own concerns as it thinks fit.

Alexander Hamilton

#62. In the usual progress of things, the necessities of a nation in every stage of its existence will be found at least equal to its resources.

Alexander Hamilton

#63. The people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government and to reform, alter, or totally change the same when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it.

Alexander Hamilton

#64. In testimony of their Respect For The Patriot of incorruptible Integrity, The Soldier of approved Valour The Statesman of consummate Wisdom; Whose Talents and Virtues will be admired By Grateful Posterity Long after this Marble shall have mouldered into Dust.

Alexander Hamilton

#65. Alexander Hamilton originated the put and take system in our national treasury: the taxpayers put it in, and the politicians take it out

Will Rogers

#66. I inquired for Mrs. Reynolds and was shewn up stairs, at the head of which she met me and conducted me into a bed room. I took the bill out of my pocket and gave it to her. Some conversation ensued from which it was quickly apparent that other than pecuniary consolation would be acceptable.

Alexander Hamilton

#67. The powers contained in a constitution ... ought to be construed liberally in advancement of the public good.

Alexander Hamilton

#68. Nature of war to increase the executive at the expense of the legislative authority.

Alexander Hamilton

#69. Real liberty is neither found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments.

Alexander Hamilton

#70. But if insecurity was the primal source of Hamilton's incredibly energy, one would have to conclude that providence had conspired to produce at the most opportune moment perhaps the most creative liability in American history.

Joseph J. Ellis

#71. Our countrymen have all the folly of the ass and all the passiveness of the sheep.

Alexander Hamilton

#72. The loss of liberty to a generous mind is worse than death.

Alexander Hamilton

#73. The same rule that teaches the propriety of a partition between the various branches of power, teaches us likewise that this partition ought to be so contrived as to render the one independent of the other.

Alexander Hamilton

#74. [HAMILTON]
I imagine death so much it feels more like a memory

Lin-Manuel Miranda

#75. The militia is a voluntary force not associated or under the control of the States except when called out; [ when called into actual service] a permanent or long standing force would be entirely different in make-up and call.

Alexander Hamilton

#76. There can be no profit in the making or selling of things to be destroyed in war. Men may think that they have such profit, but in the end the profit will turn out to be a loss.

Alexander Hamilton

#77. The deliberative sense of the community should govern.

Alexander Hamilton

#78. The honor of a nation is its life. Deliberately to abandon it is to commit an act of political suicide.

Alexander Hamilton

#79. I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake. But through the process of amendment, interpretation, and court decision, I have finally been included in 'We, the people.'

Barbara Jordan

#80. Government is frequently and aptly classed under two descriptions-a government of force, and a government of laws; the first is the definition of despotism-the last, of liberty.

Alexander Hamilton

#81. Wherever indeed a right of property is infringed for the general good, if the nature of the case admits of compensation, it ought to be made; but if compensation be impracticable, that impracticability ought to be an obstacle to a clearly essential reform.

Alexander Hamilton

#82. It is just observation that the people commonly intend the Public Good.

Alexander Hamilton

#83. The Achaeans soon experienced, as often happens, that a victorious and powerful ally is but another name for a master.

Alexander Hamilton

#84. It is the advertiser who provides the paper for the subscriber. It is not to be disputed, that the publisher of a newspaper in this country, without a very exhaustive advertising support, would receive less reward for his labor than the humblest mechanic.

Alexander Hamilton

#85. There is no position which depends on clearer principles than that every act of a delegated authority, contrary to the commission under which it is exercised, is void. No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid.

Alexander Hamilton

#86. The masses are asses.

Alexander Hamilton

#87. The standard of good behavior for the continuance in office of the judicial magistracy is certainly one of the most valuable of the modern improvements in the practice of government.

Alexander Hamilton

#88. Real firmness is good for anything; strut is good for nothing.

Alexander Hamilton

#89. As riches increase and accumulate in few hands ... the tendency of things will be to depart from the republican standard.

Alexander Hamilton

#90. Ambition without principle never was long under the guidance of good sense.

Alexander Hamilton

#91. The valuable improvements made by the American constitutions on the popular models, both ancient and modern, cannot certainly be too much admired; but it would be an unwarrantable partiality, to contend that they have as effectually obviated the danger on this side, as was wished and expected.

Alexander Hamilton

#92. Necessity, especially in politics, often occasions false hopes, false reasonings, and a system of measures, correspondingly erroneous.

Alexander Hamilton

#93. The genius of the people will ill brook the inquisitive and preemptory spirit of excise laws.

Alexander Hamilton

#94. The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge right or make good decision.

Alexander Hamilton

#95. The system is the best that the present views and circumstances of the country will permit.

Alexander Hamilton

#96. A strong body makes the mind strong ... I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise, and independence to the mind.

Alexander Hamilton

#97. The institution of delegated power implies that there is a portion of virtue and honor among mankind which may be a reasonable foundation of confidence.

Alexander Hamilton

#98. They are not rules prescribed by the sovereign to the subject, but agreements between sovereign and sovereign.

Alexander Hamilton

#99. The vigour of government is essential to the security of liberty ... a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people, than under the forbidding appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government.

Alexander Hamilton

#100. The true principle of government is this - make the system compleat in its structure; give a perfect proportion and balance to its parts; and the powers you give it will never affect your security.

Alexander Hamilton