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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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Alexander Hamilton
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More quotes by Alexander Hamilton

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When men, engaged in unjustifiable pursuits, are aware that obstructions may come from a quarter which bare apprehension of opposition from doing what they would with eagerness rush into if no such external impediments were to be feared.
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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.
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The art of reading is to skip judiciously.
Alexander Hamilton
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If we are in earnest about giving the Union energy and duration we must abandon the vain project of legislating upon the States in their collective capacities.
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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 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.
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It's not tyranny we desire it's a just, limited, federal government.
Alexander Hamilton
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The prosperity of commerce is now perceived and acknowledged by all enlightened statesmen to be the most useful as well as the most productive source of national wealth, and has accordingly become a primary object of their political cares.
Alexander Hamilton
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If it were to be asked, What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? The answer would be, An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws - the first growing out of the last . . . . A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government.
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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[W]ar is a question, under our constitution, not of Executive, but of Legislative cognizance. It belongs to Congress to say whether the Nation shall of choice dismiss the olive branch and unfurl the banners of War.
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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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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What bitter anguish would not the people of Athens have often escaped if their government had contained so provident a safeguard against tyranny of their own passions? Popular liberty might then have escaped the indelible reproach of decreeing to the same citizens the hemlock on one day and statutes the next.
Alexander Hamilton
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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.
Alexander Hamilton
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There can be no profit in the making or selling of things to be destroyed in war. Men may think that they have such profit, but in the end the profit will turn out to be a loss.
Alexander Hamilton
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Man is a reasoning rather than a reasonable animal.
Alexander Hamilton
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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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Measures which serve to abridge the free competition of foreign Articles, have a tendency to occasion an enhancement of prices.
Alexander Hamilton
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Civil liberty is only natural liberty, modified and secured by the sanctions of civil society. It is not a thing, in its own nature, precarious and dependent on human will and caprice but it is conformable to the constitution of man, as well as necessary to the well-being of society.
Alexander Hamilton