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In disquisitions of every kind there are certain primary truths, or first principles, upon which all subsequent reasoning must depend.

Alexander Hamilton

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More quotes by 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.
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That experience is the parent of wisdom is an adage the truth of which is recognized by the wisest as well as the simplest of mankind.
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To presume a want of motives for such contests . . . would be to forget that men are ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious.
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Self-preservation is the first principle of our nature.
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Some reasonable term ought to be allowed to enable aliens to get rid of foreign and acquire American attachments to learn the principles and imbibe the spirit of our government and to admit of a probability at least, of their feeling a real interest in our affairs.
Alexander Hamilton
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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
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Safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national conduct. To be more safe, [nations] at length become willing to run the risk of being less free.
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For my part, I sincerely esteem the Constitution, a system which without the finger of God, never could have been suggested and agreed upon by such a diversity of interests.
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A fondness for power is implanted in most men, and it is natural to abuse it when acquired.
Alexander Hamilton
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An over-scrupulous jealousy of danger to the rights of the people, which is more commonly the fault of the head than of the heart, will be represented as mere pretense and artifice, the stale bait for popularity at the expense of the public good.
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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A government ought to contain in itself every power requisite to the full accomplishment of the objects committed to its care, and to the complete execution of the trusts for which it is responsible, free from every other control but a regard to the public good and to the sense of the people.
Alexander Hamilton
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It is astonishing that so simple a truth should ever have had an adversary and it is one among a multitude of proofs, how apt a spirit of ill-informed jealousy, or of too great abstraction and refinement is to lead men astray from the plainest paths of reason and conviction.
Alexander Hamilton
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It is a singular capriciousness of the human mind, that after all the admonitions we have had from experience on this head, there should still be found men, who object to the new constitution for deviating from a principle which has been found the bane of the old.
Alexander Hamilton
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You should not have taken advantage of my sensibility to steal into my affections without my consent.
Alexander Hamilton
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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
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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
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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.
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The inhabitants of territories, often the theatre of war, are unavoidably subject to frequent infringements on their rights, which serve to weaken their sense of those rights and by degrees, the people are brought to consider the soldiery not only as their protectors but as their superiors.
Alexander Hamilton
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Necessity, especially in politics, often occasions false hopes, false reasonings, and a system of measures, correspondingly erroneous.
Alexander Hamilton