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Safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national conduct. To be more safe, [nations] at length become willing to run the risk of being less free.

Alexander Hamilton

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More quotes by Alexander Hamilton

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The Courts must declare the sense of the law and if they should be disposed to exercise will instead of judgement the consequences would be the substitution of their pleasure for that of the legislative body.
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A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government.
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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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How can you trust people who are poor and own no property? ... Inequality of property will exist as long as liberty exists.
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The obscurity is much oftener in the passions and prejudices of the reasoner than in the subject.
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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
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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.
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These are not vague inferences . . . but they are solid conclusions drawn from the natural and necessary progress of human affairs.
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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Is it not time to awake from the deceitful dream of a golden age, and to adopt as a practical maxim for the direction of our political conduct, that we, as well as the other inhabitants of the globe, are yet remote from the happy empire of perfect wisdom and perfect virtue?
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The loss of liberty to a generous mind is worse than death.
Alexander Hamilton
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[H]owever weak our country may be, I hope we shall never sacrifice our liberties.
Alexander Hamilton
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Every power vested in a government is in its nature sovereign, and includes by force of the term a right to employ all the means requisite . . . to the attainment of the ends of such power.
Alexander Hamilton
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For my part, I sincerely esteem the Constitution, a system which without the finger of God, never could have been suggested and agreed upon by such a diversity of interests.
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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Were it not that it might require too long a discussion, it would not be difficult to demonstrate that a large and well-organized republic can scarcely lose its liberty from any other cause than that of anarchy, to which a contempt of the laws is the high-road.
Alexander Hamilton
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The law... dictated by God Himself is, of course, superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times. No human laws are of any validity if contrary to this.
Alexander Hamilton
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It is presumable that no country will be able to borrow of foreigners upon better terms than the United States, because none can, perhaps, afford so good security.
Alexander Hamilton
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If the end be clearly comprehended within any of the specified powers, and if the measure have an obvious relation to that end, and is not forbidden by any particular provision of the Constitution, it may safely be deemed to come within the compass of the national authority.
Alexander Hamilton
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Experience is the oracle of truth and where its responses are unequivocal, they ought to be conclusive and sacred.
Alexander Hamilton