Quote

The true principle of a republic is that the people should choose whom they please to govern them. Representation is imperfect, in proportion as the current of popular favor is checked. The great source of free government, popular election, should be perfectly pure, and the most unbounded liberty allowed.

Alexander Hamilton

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Alexander Hamilton
People
Please
Proportion
Govern
Source
Currents
Representation
Principles
Popular
Imperfect
Liberty
Allowed
Favor
Free
Principle
Republic
True
Election
Current
Government
Choose
Favors
Unbounded
Great
Pure
Perfectly
Checked

More quotes by Alexander Hamilton

Image
The people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government and to reform, alter, or totally change the same when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
The origin of all civil government, justly established, must be a voluntary compact, between the rulers and the ruled and must be liable to such limitations, as are necessary for the security of the absolute rights of the latter for what original title can any man or set of men have, to govern others, except their own consent?
Alexander Hamilton
Image
[T]hough individual oppression may now and then proceed fro the courts of justice, the general liberty of the people can never be endangered from that quarter . . .
Alexander Hamilton
Image
Common interest may always be reckoned upon as the surest bond of sympathy.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
[In the event of war, Americans would] resort for repose and security to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe they, at length, become willing to run the risk of being less free.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
[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.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
Ambition without principle never was long under the guidance of good sense.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
I will venture to assert that no combination of designing men under heaven will be capable of making a government unpopular which is in its principles a wise and good one, and vigorous in its operations.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
Man is a reasoning rather than a reasonable animal.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
Money is, with propriety, considered as the vital principle of the body politic as that which sustains its life and motion, and enables it to perform its most essential functions.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
I propose . . . . The conformity of the proposed Constitution to the true principles of republican government.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of man will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
The local interest of a State ought in every case to give way to the interests of the Union. For when a sacrifice of one or the other is necessary, the former becomes only an apparent, partial interest, and should yield, on the principle that the smaller good ought never to oppose the greater good.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
The laws of Congress are restricted to a certain sphere, and when they depart from this sphere, they are no longer supreme or binding.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
A fondness for power is implanted in most men, and it is natural to abuse it when acquired.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
There is one transcendant advantage belonging to the province of the State governments . . . -I mean the ordinary administration of criminal and civil justice.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
I have thought it my duty to exhibit things as they are, not as they ought to be.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
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.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
Hence, in a state of nature, no man had any moral power to deprive another of his life, limbs, property, or liberty nor the least authority to command or exact obedience from him, except that which arose from the ties of consanguinity.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
Let Americans disdain to be the instruments of European greatness! Let the thirteen States, bound together in a strict and indissoluble Union, concur in erecting one great American system, superior to the control of all transatlantic force or influence, and able to dictate the terms of the connection between the old and the new world!
Alexander Hamilton