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It is astonishing that so simple a truth should ever have had an adversary and it is one among a multitude of proofs, how apt a spirit of ill-informed jealousy, or of too great abstraction and refinement is to lead men astray from the plainest paths of reason and conviction.

Alexander Hamilton

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More quotes by Alexander Hamilton

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A well adjusted person is one who makes the same mistake twice without getting nervous.
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I confess I am at a loss to discover what temptation the persons entrusted with the administration of the general government could ever feel to divest the States of the authorities of that description. The regulation of the mere domestic police of a State appears to me to hold out slender allurements to ambition.
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Of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants.
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Hard words are very rarely useful. Real firmness is good for every thing. Strut is good for nothing.
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In a free government, the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights. It consists in the one case in the multiplicity of interests, and in the other in the multiplicity of sects.
Alexander Hamilton
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An over-scrupulous jealousy of danger to the rights of the people, which is more commonly the fault of the head than of the heart, will be represented as mere pretense and artifice, the stale bait for popularity at the expense of the public good.
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You should not have taken advantage of my sensibility to steal into my affections without my consent.
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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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[A] power equal to every possible contingency must exist somewhere in the government . . .
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The reasonableness of the agency of the national courts in cases in which the state tribunals cannot be supposed to be impartial, speaks for itself. No man ought certainly to be a judge in his own cause, or in any cause in respect to which he has the least interest or bias.
Alexander Hamilton
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The instrument by which it [government] must act are either the AUTHORITY of the laws or FORCE. If the first be destroyed, the last must be substituted and where this becomes the ordinary instrument of government there is an end to liberty!
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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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By a steady adherence to the Union we may hope, erelong, to become the arbiter of Europe in America, and to be able to incline the balance of European competitions in this part of the world as our interest may dictate.
Alexander Hamilton
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It is evident from the state of the country, from the habits of the people, from the experience we have had on the point itself, that it is impracticable to raise any very considerable sums by direct taxation.
Alexander Hamilton
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Its objects are CONTRACTS with foreign nations which have the force of law, but derive it from the obligations of good faith.
Alexander Hamilton
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It is one thing to be subordinate to the laws, and another [for the Executive] to be dependent on the legislative body. The first comports with, the last violates, the fundamental principles of good government and, whatever may be the forms of the Constitution, unites all power in the same hands.
Alexander Hamilton
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The awful discretion, which a court of impeachments must necessarily have, to doom to honor or to infamy the most confidential and the most distinguished characters of the community, forbids the commitment of the trust to a small number of persons.
Alexander Hamilton
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That there may happen cases in which the national government may be necessitated to resort to force, cannot be denied.
Alexander Hamilton
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There is one transcendant advantage belonging to the province of the State governments . . . -I mean the ordinary administration of criminal and civil justice.
Alexander Hamilton
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No character, however upright, is a match for constantly reiterated attacks, however false.
Alexander Hamilton