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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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This process of election affords a moral certainty that the office of President will seldom fall to the lot of any many who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.
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Hard words are very rarely useful. Real firmness is good for every thing. Strut is good for nothing.
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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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States, like individuals, who observe their engagements, are respected and trusted: while the reverse is the fate of those who pursue an opposite conduct.
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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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There is perhaps, nothing more likely to disturb the tranquillity of nations, than their being bound to mutual contributions for any common object that does not yield an equal and coincident benefit. For it is an observation as true, as it is trite, that there is nothing men differ so readily about as the payment of money.
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A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government.
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The obscurity is much oftener in the passions and prejudices of the reasoner than in the subject.
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If the Constitution is adopted (and it was) the Union will be in fact and in theory an association of States or a Confederacy.
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Ambition without principle never was long under the guidance of good sense.
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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.
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It has been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny their figure deformity.
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Great Ambition, unchecked by principle, or the love of Glory, is an unruly Tyrant.
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How can you trust people who are poor and own no property? ... Inequality of property will exist as long as liberty exists.
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Were it not that it might require too long a discussion, it would not be difficult to demonstrate that a large and well-organized republic can scarcely lose its liberty from any other cause than that of anarchy, to which a contempt of the laws is the high-road.
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If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify.
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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.
Alexander Hamilton
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The experience of past ages may inform us, that when the circumstances of a people render them distressed, their rulers generally recur to severe, cruel, and oppressive measures. Instead of endeavoring to establish their authority in the affection of their subjects, they think they have no security but in their fear.
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To attach full confidence to an institution of this nature, it appears to be an essential ingredient in its structure, that it shall be under private and not a public direction-under the guidance of individual interest, not of public policy which, would be . . . liable to being too much influenced by public necessity.
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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