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The inquiry constantly is what will please, not what will benefit the people. In such a government there can be nothing but temporary expedient, fickleness, and folly.

Alexander Hamilton

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Alexander Hamilton
Nothing
Inquiry
People
Temporary
Folly
Benefit
Constantly
Benefits
Please
Fickleness
Government
Expedient

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Learn to think continentally.
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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.
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. . . [The Judicial Branch] may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.
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One great error is that we suppose mankind more honest than they are.
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Law is defined to be a rule of action but how can that be a rule, which is little known and less fixed?
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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.
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It is just observation that the people commonly intend the Public Good.
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The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of THE CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE. The streams of national power ought to flow from that pure, original fountain of all legitimate authority.
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There may be in every government a few choice spirits, who may act from more worthy motives. One great error is that we suppose mankind more honest than they are. Our prevailing passions are ambition and interest.
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The experience of treaties being broken with impunity provide an afflicting lesson to mankind how little dependence is to be placed on treaties which have no other sanction than the obligations of good faith and which oppose general considerations of peace and justice to the impulse of any immediate interest and passion.
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As to Taxes, they are evidently inseparable from Government. It is impossible without them to pay the debts of the nation, to protect it from foreign danger, or to secure individuals from lawless violence and rapine.
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When a government betrays the people by amassing too much power and becoming tyrannical, the people have no choice but to exercise their original right of self-defense — to fight the government.
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It is in vain to hope to guard against events too mighty for human foresight or precaution, and it would be idle to object to a government because it could not perform impossibilities.
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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.
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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.
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And as the vicissitudes of Nations beget a perpetual tendency to the accumulation of debt, there ought to be in every government a perpetual, anxious, and unceasing effort to reduce that, which at any times exists, as fast as shall be practicable consistently with integrity and good faith.
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If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify.
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The principal purposes to be answered by union are these the common defense of the members the preservation of the public peace as well against internal convulsions as external attacks the regulation of commerce with other nations and between the States the superintendence of our intercourse, political and commercial, with foreign countries.
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A national debt if it is not excessive will be to us a national blessing it will be powerfull cement of our union. It will also create a necessity for keeping up taxation to a degree which without being oppressive, will be a spur to industry.
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Money is, with propriety, considered as the vital principle of the body politic as that which sustains its life and motion, and enables it to perform its most essential functions.
Alexander Hamilton