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Take mankind as they are, and what are they governed by? Their passions.

Alexander Hamilton

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Alexander Hamilton
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More quotes by Alexander Hamilton

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Let experience, the least fallible guide of human opinion, be appealed to for an answer to these inquiries.
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A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one.
Alexander Hamilton
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If mankind were to resolve to agree in no institution of government, until every part of it had been adjusted to the most exact standard of perfection, society would soon become a general scene of anarchy, and the world a desert.
Alexander Hamilton
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Government implies the power of making laws. It is essential to the idea of a law, that it be attended with a sanction or, in other words, a penalty or punishment for disobedience.
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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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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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I will venture to assert that no combination of designing men under heaven will be capable of making a government unpopular which is in its principles a wise and good one, and vigorous in its operations.
Alexander Hamilton
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The people are turbulent and changing they seldom judge right or make good decision.
Alexander Hamilton
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Every individual of the community at large has an equal right to the protection of government.
Alexander Hamilton
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But the greatest obstacle of all to the successful prosecution of a new branch of industry in a country, in which it was before unknown, consists . . . in the bounties, premiums, and other aids which are granted, in a variety of cases, by the nations, in which the establishments to be imitated are previously introduced.
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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Man is a reasoning rather than a reasonable animal.
Alexander Hamilton
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Learn to think continentally.
Alexander Hamilton
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The local interest of a State ought in every case to give way to the interests of the Union. For when a sacrifice of one or the other is necessary, the former becomes only an apparent, partial interest, and should yield, on the principle that the smaller good ought never to oppose the greater good.
Alexander Hamilton
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[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
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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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But might not his [the president's] nomination be overruled? I grant it might, yet this could only be to make place for another nomination by himself. The person ultimately appointed must be object of his preference, though perhaps not in the first degree. It is also not very probable that his nomination would often be overruled.
Alexander Hamilton
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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
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The rights of neutrality will only be respected when they are defended by an adequate power. A nation, despicable by its weakness, forfeits even the privilege of being neutral.
Alexander Hamilton
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[H]owever weak our country may be, I hope we shall never sacrifice our liberties.
Alexander Hamilton