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I never expect to see a perfect work from an imperfect man.

Alexander Hamilton

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Alexander Hamilton
Federalist
Imperfect
Expect
Perfect
Work
Never
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More quotes by Alexander Hamilton

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Common interest may always be reckoned upon as the surest bond of sympathy.
Alexander Hamilton
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If government is in the hands of the few, they will tyrannize the many if in the hands of the many, they will tyrannize over the few. It ought to be in the hands of both, and be separated...they will need a mutual check. This check is a monarch.
Alexander Hamilton
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But as the plan of the convention aims only at a partial union or consolidation, the State governments would clearly retain all the rights of sovereignty which they before had, and which were not, by that act, EXCLUSIVELY delegated to the United States.
Alexander Hamilton
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The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself and can never be erased.
Alexander Hamilton
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States, like individuals, who observe their engagements, are respected and trusted: while the reverse is the fate of those who pursue an opposite conduct.
Alexander Hamilton
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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
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The same state of the passions which fits the multitude, who have not a sufficient stock of reason and knowledge to guide them, for opposition to tyranny and oppression, very naturally leads them to a contempt and disregard of all authority.
Alexander Hamilton
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There are seasons in every country when noise and impudence pass current for worth and in popular commotions especially, the clamors of interested and factious men are often mistaken for patriotism.
Alexander Hamilton
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Little more can reasonably be aimed at with respect to the people at large than to have them properly armed.
Alexander Hamilton
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Those who do not industrialize become hewers of wood and hawkers of water
Alexander Hamilton
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Learn to think continentally.
Alexander Hamilton
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I would die to preserve the law upon a solid foundation but take away liberty, and the foundation is destroyed.
Alexander Hamilton
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[V]igor of government is essential to the security of liberty.
Alexander Hamilton
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The citizens of America have too much discernment to be argued into anarchy. And I am much mistaken, if experience has not wrought a deep and solemn conviction in the public mind, that greater energy of government is essential to the welfare and prosperity of the community
Alexander Hamilton
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Take mankind as they are, and what are they governed by? Their passions.
Alexander Hamilton
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This power ought to be coextensive with all the possible combinations of such circumstances and ought to be under the direction of the same councils which are appointed to preside over the common defense.
Alexander Hamilton
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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
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Wise politicians will be cautious about fettering the government with restrictions that cannot be observed, because they know that every break of the fundamental laws, though dictated by necessity, impairs that sacred reverence which ought to be maintained in the breast of rulers towards the constitution of a country.
Alexander Hamilton
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That there may happen cases in which the national government may be necessitated to resort to force, cannot be denied.
Alexander Hamilton
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It is astonishing that so simple a truth should ever have had an adversary and it is one among a multitude of proofs, how apt a spirit of ill-informed jealousy, or of too great abstraction and refinement is to lead men astray from the plainest paths of reason and conviction.
Alexander Hamilton