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After an unequivocal experience of the inefficacy of the subsisting federal government, you are called upon to deliberate on a new Constitution for the United States of America.

Alexander Hamilton

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Alexander Hamilton
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More quotes by Alexander Hamilton

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Can any reasonable man be well disposed toward a government which makes war and carnage the only means of supporting itself?
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Effective resistance to usurpers is possible only provided the citizens understand their rights and are disposed to defend them.
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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.
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Learn to think continentally.
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I propose . . . . The conformity of the proposed Constitution to the true principles of republican government.
Alexander Hamilton
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To presume a want of motives for such contests . . . would be to forget that men are ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious.
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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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A fondness for power is implanted in most men, and it is natural to abuse it when acquired. This maxim, drawn from the experience of all ages, makes it the height of folly to intrust any set of men with power which is not under every possible control perpetual strides are made after more as long as there is any part withheld.
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A republic of this kind, able to withstand an external force, may support itself without any internal corruptions. The form of this society prevents all manner of inconveniences.
Alexander Hamilton
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To answer the purpose of the adversaries of the Constitution, they ought to prove, not merely that particular provisions in it are not the best, which might have been imagined but that the plan upon the whole is bad and pernicious.
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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The Convention probably foresaw what it has been a principal aim of these papers to inculcate that the danger which most threatens our political welfare is, that the state governments will finally sap the foundations of the Union.
Alexander Hamilton
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The inquiry constantly is what will please, not what will benefit the people. In such a government there can be nothing but temporary expedient, fickleness, and folly.
Alexander Hamilton
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The variety of more minute interests, which will necessarily fall under the superintendence of the local administrations . . . cannot be particularized without involving a detail too tedious and uninteresting to compensate for the instruction it might afford.
Alexander Hamilton
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In the general course of human nature, A power over a man's subsistence amounts to a power over his will.
Alexander Hamilton
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The circumstances that endanger the safety of nations are infinite, and for this reason no constitutional shackles can wisely be imposed on the power to which the care of it is committed.
Alexander Hamilton
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There is nothing absurd or impracticable in the idea of a league or alliance between independent nations for certain defined purposes precisely stated in a treaty regulating all the details of time, place, circumstance, and quantity leaving nothing to future discretion and depending for its execution on the good faith of the parties.
Alexander Hamilton
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The honor of a nation is its life. Deliberately to abandon it is to commit an act of political suicide.
Alexander Hamilton
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There are men who could neither be distressed nor won into a sacrifice of their duty but this stern virtue is the growth of few soils: And in the main it will be found, that a power over a man's support is a power over his will.
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