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Experience is the oracle of truth and where its responses are unequivocal, they ought to be conclusive and sacred.

Alexander Hamilton

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Alexander Hamilton
Oracles
Federalist
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Experience
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Unequivocal

More quotes by Alexander Hamilton

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The same state of the passions which fits the multitude, who have not a sufficient stock of reason and knowledge to guide them, for opposition to tyranny and oppression, very naturally leads them to a contempt and disregard of all authority.
Alexander Hamilton
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The powers contained in a constitution...ought to be construed liberally in advancement of the public good.
Alexander Hamilton
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The inquiry constantly is what will please, not what will benefit the people. In such a government there can be nothing but temporary expedient, fickleness, and folly.
Alexander Hamilton
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I have thought it my duty to exhibit things as they are, not as they ought to be.
Alexander Hamilton
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It is the Press which has corrupted our political morals - and it is to the Press we must look for the means of our political regeneration.
Alexander Hamilton
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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.
Alexander Hamilton
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The experience of treaties being broken with impunity provide an afflicting lesson to mankind how little dependence is to be placed on treaties which have no other sanction than the obligations of good faith and which oppose general considerations of peace and justice to the impulse of any immediate interest and passion.
Alexander Hamilton
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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.
Alexander Hamilton
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Remember civil and religious liberty always go together: if the foundation of the one be sapped, the other will fall of course.
Alexander Hamilton
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Wise politicians will be cautious about fettering the government with restrictions that cannot be observed, because they know that every break of the fundamental laws, though dictated by necessity, impairs that sacred reverence which ought to be maintained in the breast of rulers towards the constitution of a country.
Alexander Hamilton
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Men give me credit for some genius. All the genius I have lies in this when I have a subject in hand, I study it profoundly. Day and night it is before me. My mind becomes pervaded with it. Then the effort that I have made is what people are pleased to call the fruit of genius. It is the fruit of labor and thought.
Alexander Hamilton
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The natural cure for an ill-administration, in a popular or representative constitution, is a change of men.
Alexander Hamilton
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Great Ambition, unchecked by principle, or the love of Glory, is an unruly Tyrant.
Alexander Hamilton
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There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism.
Alexander Hamilton
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Is it not time to awake from the deceitful dream of a golden age, and to adopt as a practical maxim for the direction of our political conduct, that we, as well as the other inhabitants of the globe, are yet remote from the happy empire of perfect wisdom and perfect virtue?
Alexander Hamilton
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Foreign influence is truly the Grecian horse to a republic. We cannot be too careful to exclude its influence.
Alexander Hamilton
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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.
Alexander Hamilton
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Tyranny has perhaps oftener grown out of the assumptions of power, called for, on pressing exigencies, by a defective constitution, than out of the full exercise of the largest constitutional authorities.
Alexander Hamilton
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A fondness for power is implanted in most men, and it is natural to abuse it when acquired. This maxim, drawn from the experience of all ages, makes it the height of folly to intrust any set of men with power which is not under every possible control perpetual strides are made after more as long as there is any part withheld.
Alexander Hamilton
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If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government.
Alexander Hamilton