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Nothing is more natural to men in office, than to look with peculiar deference towards that authority to which they owe their official existence.

Alexander Hamilton

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Alexander Hamilton
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More quotes by Alexander Hamilton

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It has been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny their figure deformity.
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The standard of good behavior for the continuance in office of the judicial magistracy is certainly one of the most valuable of the modern improvements in the practice of government.
Alexander Hamilton
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Some reasonable term ought to be allowed to enable aliens to get rid of foreign and acquire American attachments to learn the principles and imbibe the spirit of our government and to admit of a probability at least, of their feeling a real interest in our affairs.
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No character, however upright, is a match for constantly reiterated attacks, however false.
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Whoever attentively considers the different departments of power must perceive, that, in a government in which they are separated from each other, the judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them.
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The injury which may possibly be done by defeating a few good laws, will be amply compensated by the advantage of preventing a number of bad ones.
Alexander Hamilton
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People sometimes attribute my success to my genius all the genius I know anything about is hard work.
Alexander Hamilton
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The same rule that teaches the propriety of a partition between the various branches of power, teaches us likewise that this partition ought to be so contrived as to render the one independent of the other.
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 has been observed, [that for the federal government] to coerce the States is one of the maddest projects that was ever devised.
Alexander Hamilton
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This process of election affords a moral certainty that the office of President will seldom fall to the lot of any many who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.
Alexander Hamilton
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The civil jury is a valuable safeguard to liberty.
Alexander Hamilton
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There is no position which depends on clearer principles than that every act of a delegated authority, contrary to the commission under which it is exercised, is void. No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid.
Alexander Hamilton
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The means ought to be proportioned to the end the persons from whose agency the attainment of any end is expected ought to possess the means by which it is to be attained.
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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The institution of delegated power implies that there is a portion of virtue and honor among mankind which may be a reasonable foundation of confidence.
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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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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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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The superiority...enjoyed by nations that have...perfected a branch of industry, constitutes a...formidable obstacle.
Alexander Hamilton