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Opinion, whether well or ill-founded, is the governing principle of human affairs

Alexander Hamilton

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More quotes by Alexander Hamilton

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[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
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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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The [president] has no particle of spiritual jurisdiction. . . .
Alexander Hamilton
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Civil liberty is only natural liberty, modified and secured by the sanctions of civil society.
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.
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It is a just observation that the people commonly intend the Public Good. This often applies to their very errors. But their good sense would despise the adulator who should pretend they always reason right about the means of promoting it.
Alexander Hamilton
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The obscurity is much oftener in the passions and prejudices of the reasoner than in the subject.
Alexander Hamilton
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The injury which may possibly be done by defeating a few good laws, will be amply compensated by the advantage of preventing a number of bad ones.
Alexander Hamilton
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A LAW, by the very meaning of the term, includes supremacy. It is a rule which those to whom it is prescribed are bound to observe. This results from every political association.
Alexander Hamilton
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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
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There is nothing absurd or impracticable in the idea of a league or alliance between independent nations for certain defined purposes precisely stated in a treaty regulating all the details of time, place, circumstance, and quantity leaving nothing to future discretion and depending for its execution on the good faith of the parties.
Alexander Hamilton
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[A] power equal to every possible contingency must exist somewhere in the government . . .
Alexander Hamilton
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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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This power ought to be coextensive with all the possible combinations of such circumstances and ought to be under the direction of the same councils which are appointed to preside over the common defense.
Alexander Hamilton
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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.
Alexander Hamilton
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Men are rather reasoning than reasonable animals for the most part governed by the impulse of passion.
Alexander Hamilton
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To judge from the history of mankind, we shall be compelled to conclude, that the fiery and destructive passions of war, reign in the human breast, with much more powerful sway, than the mild and beneficent sentiments of peace.
Alexander Hamilton
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CREDIT supposes specific and permanent funds for the punctual payment of interest, with a moral certainty of a final redemption of the principal.
Alexander Hamilton
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But the greatest obstacle of all to the successful prosecution of a new branch of industry in a country, in which it was before unknown, consists . . . in the bounties, premiums, and other aids which are granted, in a variety of cases, by the nations, in which the establishments to be imitated are previously introduced.
Alexander Hamilton
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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