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Man is a reasoning rather than a reasonable animal.

Alexander Hamilton

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Alexander Hamilton
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More quotes by Alexander Hamilton

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When you assemble from your several counties in the Legislature, were every member to be guided only by the apparent interest of his county, government would be impracticable. There must be a perpetual accomodation and sacrifice of local advantage to general expediency.
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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.
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The system is the best that the present views and circumstances of the country will permit.
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When human laws contradict or discountenance the means, which are necessary to preserve the essential rights of any society, they defeat the proper end of all laws, and so become null and void.
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That experience is the parent of wisdom is an adage the truth of which is recognized by the wisest as well as the simplest of mankind.
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Every individual of the community at large has an equal right to the protection of government.
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Take mankind as they are, and what are they governed by? Their passions.
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In a free government, the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights. It consists in the one case in the multiplicity of interests, and in the other in the multiplicity of sects.
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Of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants.
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A well adjusted person is one who makes the same mistake twice without getting nervous.
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The attributes of sovereignty are now enjoyed by every state in the Union.
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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 truth is, after all the declamations we have heard, that the Constitution is itself, in every rational sense, and to every useful purpose, A BILL OF RIGHTS.
Alexander Hamilton
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It will be forgotten, on the one hand, that jealousy is the usual concomitant of violent love, and that the noble enthusiasm of liberty is too apt to be infected with a spirit of narrow and illiberal distrust. On the other hand, it will be equally forgotten, that the vigour of government is essential to the security of liberty.
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Safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national conduct. To be more safe, [nations] at length become willing to run the risk of being less free.
Alexander Hamilton
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[In the event of war, Americans would] resort for repose and security to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe they, at length, become willing to run the risk of being less free.
Alexander Hamilton
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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
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There is nothing absurd or impracticable in the idea of a league or alliance between independent nations for certain defined purposes precisely stated in a treaty regulating all the details of time, place, circumstance, and quantity leaving nothing to future discretion and depending for its execution on the good faith of the parties.
Alexander Hamilton
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Men are rather reasoning than reasonable animals for the most part governed by the impulse of passion.
Alexander Hamilton
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A feeble executive implies a feeble execution of the government. A feeble execution is but another phrase for a bad execution and a government ill executed, whatever may be its theory, must be, in practice, a bad government.
Alexander Hamilton