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It is of the nature of war to increase the executive at the expense of the legislative authority.

Alexander Hamilton

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Alexander Hamilton
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More quotes by Alexander Hamilton

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To look for a continuation in harmony between a number of independent unconnected sovereignties, situated in the same neighborhood, would be to disregard the uniform course of human events, and to set at defiance the accumulated experience of ages.
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The militia is a voluntary force not associated or under the control of the States except when called out [ when called into actual service] a permanent or long standing force would be entirely different in make-up and call.
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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 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.
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It is far more rational to suppose that the courts were designed to be an intermediate body between the people and the legislature, in order, among other things, to keep the latter within the limits assigned to their authority.
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For my part, I sincerely esteem the Constitution, a system which without the finger of God, never could have been suggested and agreed upon by such a diversity of interests.
Alexander Hamilton
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Necessity, especially in politics, often occasions false hopes, false reasonings, and a system of measures, correspondingly erroneous.
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That experience is the parent of wisdom is an adage the truth of which is recognized by the wisest as well as the simplest of mankind.
Alexander Hamilton
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I trust that the proposed Constitution afford a genuine specimen of representative government and republican government and that it will answer, in an eminent degree, all the beneficial purposes of society.
Alexander Hamilton
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As the duties of superintending the national defense and of securing the public peace against foreign or domestic violence involve a provision for casualties and dangers to which no possible limits can be assigned, the power of making that provision ought to know no other bounds than the exigencies of the nation and the resources of the community.
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[A] power equal to every possible contingency must exist somewhere in the government . . .
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The changes in the human condition are uncertain and frequent. Many, on whom fortune has bestowed her favours, may trace their family to a more unprosperous station and many who are now in obscurity, may look back upon the affluence and exalted rank of their ancestors.
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If there are such things as political axioms, the propriety of the judicial power of a government being co-extensive with its legislative, may be ranked among the number.
Alexander Hamilton
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There is something so far-fetched and so extravagant in the idea of danger to liberty from the militia that one is at a loss whether to treat it with gravity or with raillery whether to consider it as a mere trial of skill, like the paradoxes of rhetoricians as a disingenuous artifice to instil prejudices at any price or as the serious.
Alexander Hamilton
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The State governments possess inherent advantages, which will ever give them an influence and ascendancy over the National Government, and will for ever preclude the possibility of federal encroachments. That their liberties, indeed, can be subverted by the federal head, is repugnant to every rule of political calculation.
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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The praise of a civilized world is justly due to Christianity—war, by the influence of the humane principles of that religion, has been stripped of half its horrors. The French renounce Christianity, and they relapse into barbarism—war resumes the same hideous and savage form which it wore in the ages of Gothic and Roman violence.
Alexander Hamilton
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The people are turbulent and changing they seldom judge right or make good decision.
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.
Alexander Hamilton
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Common interest may always be reckoned upon as the surest bond of sympathy.
Alexander Hamilton