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The passions of a revolution are apt to hurry even good men into excesses.

Alexander Hamilton

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Alexander Hamilton
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The natural effect of low interest is to increase trade and industry because undertakings of every kind can be prosecuted with greater advantage.
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The desire of reward is one of the strongest incentives of human conduct ... the best security for the fidelity of mankind is to make their interest coincide with their duty.
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Ambition without principle never was long under the guidance of good sense.
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I propose . . . . The conformity of the proposed Constitution to the true principles of republican government.
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Learn to think continentally.
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[H]owever weak our country may be, I hope we shall never sacrifice our liberties.
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They are not rules prescribed by the sovereign to the subject, but agreements between sovereign and sovereign.
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The laws of certain states . . . give an ownership in the service of Negroes as personal property . . . . But being men, by the laws of God and nature, they were capable of acquiring liberty - and when the captor in war . . . thought fit to give them liberty, the gift was not only valid, but irrevocable.
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Little more can reasonably be aimed at with respect to the people at large than to have them properly armed.
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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.
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What bitter anguish would not the people of Athens have often escaped if their government had contained so provident a safeguard against tyranny of their own passions? Popular liberty might then have escaped the indelible reproach of decreeing to the same citizens the hemlock on one day and statutes the next.
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The [president] has no particle of spiritual jurisdiction. . . .
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The laws of Congress are restricted to a certain sphere, and when they depart from this sphere, they are no longer supreme or binding.
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[W]e must extend the authority of the Union to the persons of the citizens - the only proper objects of government.
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The circumstances that endanger the safety of nations are infinite, and for this reason no constitutional shackles can wisely be imposed on the power to which the care of it is committed.
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These powers ought to exist without limitation, because it is impossible to foresee or to define the extent and variety of national exigencies, and the correspondent extent and variety of the means which may be necessary to satisfy them.
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If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government.
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