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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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More quotes by Alexander Hamilton

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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 . . .
Alexander Hamilton
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Establish that a Government may decline a provision for its debts, though able to make it, and you overthrow all public morality, you unhinge all the principles that must preserve the limits of free constitutions.
Alexander Hamilton
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It is a just observation that the people commonly intend the Public Good. This often applies to their very errors. But their good sense would despise the adulator who should pretend they always reason right about the means of promoting it.
Alexander Hamilton
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To watch the progress of such endeavors is the office of a free press. To give us early alarm and put us on our guard against encroachments of power. This then is a right of utmost importance, one for which, instead of yielding it up, we ought rather to spill our blood.
Alexander Hamilton
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If government is in the hands of the few, they will tyrannize the many if in the hands of the many, they will tyrannize over the few. It ought to be in the hands of both, and be separated...they will need a mutual check. This check is a monarch.
Alexander Hamilton
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Though a wide ocean separates the United States from Europe, yet there are various considerations that warn us against an excess of confidence or security.
Alexander Hamilton
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[W]ar is a question, under our constitution, not of Executive, but of Legislative cognizance. It belongs to Congress to say whether the Nation shall of choice dismiss the olive branch and unfurl the banners of War.
Alexander Hamilton
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Civil liberty is only natural liberty, modified and secured by the sanctions of civil society. It is not a thing, in its own nature, precarious and dependent on human will and caprice but it is conformable to the constitution of man, as well as necessary to the well-being of society.
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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[If you understood the natural rights of mankind,] [y]ou would be convinced that natural liberty is a gift of the beneficent Creator to the whole human race, and that civil liberty is founded in that, and cannot be wrested from any people without the most manifest violation of justice.
Alexander Hamilton
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As on the one hand, the necessity for borrowing in particular emergencies cannot be doubted, so on the other, it is equally evident that to be able to borrow upon good terms, it is essential that the credit of a nation should be well established.
Alexander Hamilton
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Government is frequently and aptly classed under two descriptions-a government of force, and a government of laws the first is the definition of despotism-the last, of liberty.
Alexander Hamilton
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In politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution.
Alexander Hamilton
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Laws are a dead letter without courts to expound and define their true meaning and operation.
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
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As the duties of superintending the national defense and of securing the public peace against foreign or domestic violence involve a provision for casualties and dangers to which no possible limits can be assigned, the power of making that provision ought to know no other bounds than the exigencies of the nation and the resources of the community.
Alexander Hamilton
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The inhabitants of territories, often the theatre of war, are unavoidably subject to frequent infringements on their rights, which serve to weaken their sense of those rights and by degrees, the people are brought to consider the soldiery not only as their protectors but as their superiors.
Alexander Hamilton
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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.
Alexander Hamilton
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A struggle for liberty is in itself respectable and glorious. . . . When conducted with magnanimity, justice and humanity, it ought to command the admiration of every friend to human nature. But if sullied by crimes and extravagancies, it loses its respectability.
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