Quote

The vigour of government is essential to the security of liberty. . . . a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people, than under the forbidding appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government.

Alexander Hamilton

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Alexander Hamilton
Dangerous
Efficiency
Security
Mask
Specious
Liberty
Appearance
Forbidding
Rights
Essential
Vigour
Often
Essentials
Lurks
Government
Ambition
Federalist
People
Behinds
Firmness
Behind
Zeal

More quotes by Alexander Hamilton

Image
To attempt to enumerate the complicated variety of mischiefs in the whole system of the social economy, which proceed from a neglect of the maxims that uphold public credit, and justify the solicitude manifested by the House on this point, would be an improper intrusion on their time and patience.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
Every nation ought to have a right to provide for its own happiness.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
Common interest may always be reckoned upon as the surest bond of sympathy.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
When you assemble from your several counties in the Legislature, were every member to be guided only by the apparent interest of his county, government would be impracticable. There must be a perpetual accomodation and sacrifice of local advantage to general expediency.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
I never expect to see a perfect work from an imperfect man.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
[H]owever weak our country may be, I hope we shall never sacrifice our liberties.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
Self-preservation is the first principle of our nature.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
The reasonableness of the agency of the national courts in cases in which the state tribunals cannot be supposed to be impartial, speaks for itself. No man ought certainly to be a judge in his own cause, or in any cause in respect to which he has the least interest or bias.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
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.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
In a free government, the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights. It consists in the one case in the multiplicity of interests, and in the other in the multiplicity of sects.
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
Image
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
Image
If the exercise of power of internal taxation by the Union should be discovered on experiment to be really inconvenient, the federal government may then forbear the use of it . . .
Alexander Hamilton
Image
Take mankind as they are, and what are they governed by? Their passions.
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
I would die to preserve the law upon a solid foundation but take away liberty, and the foundation is destroyed.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
Establish that a Government may decline a provision for its debts, though able to make it, and you overthrow all public morality, you unhinge all the principles that must preserve the limits of free constitutions.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
Now, mark my words. So long as we are a young and virtuous people, this instument will bind us together in mutual interests, mutual welfare, and mutual happiness. But when we become old and corrupt, it will bind no longer.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
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