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If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government.

Alexander Hamilton

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More quotes by Alexander Hamilton

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The experience of past ages may inform us, that when the circumstances of a people render them distressed, their rulers generally recur to severe, cruel, and oppressive measures. Instead of endeavoring to establish their authority in the affection of their subjects, they think they have no security but in their fear.
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Here sir, the people govern.
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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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Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of man will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.
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The scheme of separate confederacies, which will always multiply the chances of ambition, will be a never failing bait to all such influential characters in the State administrations as are capable of preferring their own emolument and advancement to the public weal.
Alexander Hamilton
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The idea of restraining the legislative authority, in the means of providing for the national defense, is one of those refinements which owe their origin to a zeal for liberty more ardent than enlightened.
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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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One great error is that we suppose mankind more honest than they are.
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If mankind were to resolve to agree in no institution of government, until every part of it had been adjusted to the most exact standard of perfection, society would soon become a general scene of anarchy, and the world a desert.
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The increasing remoteness of consanguinity is everyday diminishing the force of the family compact between France and Spain. And politicians have ever with great reason considered the ties of blood as feeble and precarious links of political connection.
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Let experience, the least fallible guide of human opinion, be appealed to for an answer to these inquiries.
Alexander Hamilton
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The art of reading is to skip judiciously.
Alexander Hamilton
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It is the Press which has corrupted our political morals - and it is to the Press we must look for the means of our political regeneration.
Alexander Hamilton
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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.
Alexander Hamilton
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...that standing army can never be formidable (threatening) to the liberties of the people, while there is a large body of citizens, little if at all inferior to them in the use of arms.
Alexander Hamilton
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The true principle of a republic is that the people should choose whom they please to govern them. Representation is imperfect, in proportion as the current of popular favor is checked. The great source of free government, popular election, should be perfectly pure, and the most unbounded liberty allowed.
Alexander Hamilton
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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.
Alexander Hamilton
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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.
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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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Hence, in a state of nature, no man had any moral power to deprive another of his life, limbs, property, or liberty nor the least authority to command or exact obedience from him, except that which arose from the ties of consanguinity.
Alexander Hamilton