Quote

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.

Alexander Hamilton

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Alexander Hamilton
Free
Civil
Government
Interests
Must
Case
Cases
Security
Federalist
Rights
Multiplicity
Religious
Sects
Interest
Consists

More quotes by Alexander Hamilton

Image
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
Image
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
Image
Unless your government is respectable, foreigners will invade your rights and to maintain tranquillity you must be respectable even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
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
Image
The people are turbulent and changing they seldom judge right or make good decision.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
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
Image
Hard words are very rarely useful. Real firmness is good for every thing. Strut is good for nothing.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
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.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
I have carefully examined the evidences of the Christian religion, and if I was sitting as a juror upon its authenticity I would unhesitatingly give my verdict in its favor. I can prove its truth as clearly as any proposition ever submitted to the mind of man.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
Civil liberty is only natural liberty, modified and secured by the sanctions of civil society.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
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
Image
[T]he Constitution ought to be the standard of construction for the laws, and that wherever there is an evident opposition, the laws ought to give place to the Constitution. But this doctrine is not deducible from any circumstance peculiar to the plan of convention, but from the general theory of a limited Constitution.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
The obscurity is much oftener in the passions and prejudices of the reasoner than in the subject.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
An over-scrupulous jealousy of danger to the rights of the people, which is more commonly the fault of the head than of the heart, will be represented as mere pretense and artifice, the stale bait for popularity at the expense of the public good.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
A LAW, by the very meaning of the term, includes supremacy. It is a rule which those to whom it is prescribed are bound to observe. This results from every political association.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
Industry is increased, commodities are multiplied, agriculture and manufacturers flourish: and herein consists the true wealth and prosperity of a state.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
It will be well to advert to the proportion between the objects that will require a federal provision in respect to revenue and those which will require a state provision. We shall discover that the former are altogether unlimited and that the latter are circumscribed within very moderate bounds.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
Nothing could be more ill-judged than that intolerant spirit which has, at all times, characterized political parties.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
Let us recollect that peace or war will not always be left to our option that however moderate or unambitious we may be, we cannot count upon the moderation, or hope to extinguish the ambition of others.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
Constitutions should consist only of general provisions the reason is that they must necessarily be permanent, and that they cannot calculate for the possible change of things.
Alexander Hamilton