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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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Alexander Hamilton
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More quotes by Alexander Hamilton

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The powers contained in a constitution...ought to be construed liberally in advancement of the public good.
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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 this distribution of powers the wisdom of our constitution is manifested. It is the province and duty of the Executive to preserve to the Nation the blessings of peace. The Legislature alone can interrupt those blessings, by placing the Nation in a state of War.
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When a government betrays the people by amassing too much power and becoming tyrannical, the people have no choice but to exercise their original right of self-defense — to fight the government.
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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.
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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 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.
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The safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common national sentiment on a uniformity of principles and habits on the exemption of the citizens from foreign bias and prejudice and on that love of country which will almost invariably be found to be closely connected with birth, education and family.
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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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When occasions present themselves, in which the interests of the people are at variance with their inclinations, it is the duty of the persons whom they have appointed to be the guardians of those interests, to withstand the temporary delusion, in order to give them time and opportunity for more cool and sedate reflection.
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Measures which serve to abridge the free competition of foreign Articles, have a tendency to occasion an enhancement of prices.
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The propriety of a law, in a constitutional light, must always be determined by the nature of the powers upon which it is founded.
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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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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 Judicial Branch] may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.
Alexander Hamilton
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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.
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When human laws contradict or discountenance the means, which are necessary to preserve the essential rights of any society, they defeat the proper end of all laws, and so become null and void.
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While the constitution continues to be read, and its principles known, the states, must, by every rational man, be considered as essential component parts of the union and therefore the idea of sacrificing the former to the latter is totally inadmissible.
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The passions of a revolution are apt to hurry even good men into excesses.
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Every individual of the community at large has an equal right to the protection of government.
Alexander Hamilton