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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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Alexander Hamilton
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More quotes by Alexander Hamilton

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I expect we shall be told, that the Militia of the country is its natural bulwark, and would be at all times equal to the national defence...The facts, which from our own experience forbid a reliance of this kind, are too recent to permit us to be the dupes of such a suggestion.
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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.
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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.
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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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[V]igor of government is essential to the security of liberty.
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The State governments possess inherent advantages, which will ever give them an influence and ascendancy over the National Government, and will for ever preclude the possibility of federal encroachments. That their liberties, indeed, can be subverted by the federal head, is repugnant to every rule of political calculation.
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A promise must never be broken.
Alexander Hamilton
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You should not have taken advantage of my sensibility to steal into my affections without my consent.
Alexander Hamilton
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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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If the Constitution is adopted (and it was) the Union will be in fact and in theory an association of States or a Confederacy.
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There are men who could neither be distressed nor won into a sacrifice of their duty but this stern virtue is the growth of few soils: And in the main it will be found, that a power over a man's support is a power over his will.
Alexander Hamilton
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To model our political system upon speculations of lasting tranquility, is to calculate on the weaker springs of the human character.
Alexander Hamilton
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To all general purposes we have uniformly been one people each individual citizen everywhere enjoying the same national rights, privileges, and protection.
Alexander Hamilton
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...that standing army can never be formidable (threatening) to the liberties of the people, while there is a large body of citizens, little if at all inferior to them in the use of arms.
Alexander Hamilton
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There is something so far-fetched and so extravagant in the idea of danger to liberty from the militia that one is at a loss whether to treat it with gravity or with raillery whether to consider it as a mere trial of skill, like the paradoxes of rhetoricians as a disingenuous artifice to instil prejudices at any price or as the serious.
Alexander Hamilton
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Industry is increased, commodities are multiplied, agriculture and manufacturers flourish: and herein consists the true wealth and prosperity of a state.
Alexander Hamilton
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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.
Alexander Hamilton
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The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed.
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.
Alexander Hamilton
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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