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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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Alexander Hamilton
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More quotes by Alexander Hamilton

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Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.
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Give all the power to the many, they will oppress the few. Give all the power to the few, they will oppress the many.
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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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No character, however upright, is a match for constantly reiterated attacks, however false.
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A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one.
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[Imeachable conduct is] misconduct by public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust.
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If we are in earnest about giving the Union energy and duration we must abandon the vain project of legislating upon the States in their collective capacities.
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The citizens of America have too much discernment to be argued into anarchy. And I am much mistaken, if experience has not wrought a deep and solemn conviction in the public mind, that greater energy of government is essential to the welfare and prosperity of the community
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Men give me credit for some genius. All the genius I have lies in this when I have a subject in hand, I study it profoundly. Day and night it is before me. My mind becomes pervaded with it. Then the effort that I have made is what people are pleased to call the fruit of genius. It is the fruit of labor and thought.
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If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify.
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As riches increase and accumulate in few hands . . . the tendency of things will be to depart from the republican standard.
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What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws.
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[T]hough individual oppression may now and then proceed fro the courts of justice, the general liberty of the people can never be endangered from that quarter . . .
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The power of creating new funds upon new objects of taxation, by its own authority, would enable the national government to borrow as far as its necessities might require.
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The militia is a voluntary force not associated or under the control of the States except when called out [ when called into actual service] a permanent or long standing force would be entirely different in make-up and call.
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Divide et impera must be the motto of every nation that either hates or fears us.
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The experience of treaties being broken with impunity provide an afflicting lesson to mankind how little dependence is to be placed on treaties which have no other sanction than the obligations of good faith and which oppose general considerations of peace and justice to the impulse of any immediate interest and passion.
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There can be no limitation of that authority which is to provide for the defense and protection of the community in any matter essential to the formation, direction, or support of the NATIONAL FORCES.
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When a government betrays the people by amassing too much power and becoming tyrannical, the people have no choice but to exercise their original right of self-defense — to fight the government.
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A promise must never be broken.
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