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The true principle of government is this - make the system compleat in its structure give a perfect proportion and balance to its parts and the powers you give it will never affect your security.

Alexander Hamilton

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Alexander Hamilton
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More quotes by Alexander Hamilton

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The Spirit of Enterprise, which characterizes the commercial part of America, has left no occasion of displaying itself unimproved. It is not at all probable that this unbridled spirit would pay much respect to those regulations of trade by which particular States might endeavor to secure exclusive benefits to their own citizens.
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The honor of a nation is its life. Deliberately to abandon it is to commit an act of political suicide.
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The superiority...enjoyed by nations that have...perfected a branch of industry, constitutes a...formidable obstacle.
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Unless your government is respectable, foreigners will invade your rights and to maintain tranquillity you must be respectable even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.
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This [a state militia system] appears to me the only substitute that can be devised for a standing army, and the best possible security against it, if it should exist.
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These are not vague inferences . . . but they are solid conclusions drawn from the natural and necessary progress of human affairs.
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Men are rather reasoning than reasonable animals for the most part governed by the impulse of passion.
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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.
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[W]e must extend the authority of the Union to the persons of the citizens - the only proper objects of government.
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Nothing could be more ill-judged than that intolerant spirit which has, at all times, characterized political parties.
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Great Ambition, unchecked by principle, or the love of Glory, is an unruly Tyrant.
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Common interest may always be reckoned upon as the surest bond of sympathy.
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Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.
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We are now forming a republican government. Real liberty is never found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments.
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The Achaeans soon experienced, as often happens, that a victorious and powerful ally is but another name for a master.
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Allow a government to decline paying its debts and you overthrow all public morality-you unhinge all the principles that preserve the limits of free constitutions. Nothing can more affect national prosperity than a constant and systematic attention to extinguish the present debt and to avoid as much as possibly the incurring of any new debt.
Alexander Hamilton
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It is just observation that the people commonly intend the Public Good.
Alexander Hamilton
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The great leading objects of the federal government, in which revenue is concerned, are to maintain domestic peace, and provide for the common defense.
Alexander Hamilton
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Every power vested in a government is in its nature sovereign, and includes by force of the term a right to employ all the means requisite . . . to the attainment of the ends of such power.
Alexander Hamilton
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It is a singular advantage of taxes on articles of consumption that they contain in their own nature a security against excess. They prescribe their own limit, which cannot be exceeded without defeating the end purposed - that is, an extension of the revenue.
Alexander Hamilton