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In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever character composed, passion never fails to wrest the sceptre from reason. Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.

Alexander Hamilton

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Alexander Hamilton
Whatever
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Socrates

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The circumstances that endanger the safety of nations are infinite, and for this reason no constitutional shackles can wisely be imposed on the power to which the care of it is committed.
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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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Schemes to subvert the liberties of a great community require time to mature them for execution.
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. . . [The Judicial Branch] may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.
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A nation has a right to manage its own concerns as it thinks fit.
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The loss of liberty to a generous mind is worse than death.
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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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There is no position which depends on clearer principles than that every act of a delegated authority, contrary to the commission under which it is exercised, is void. No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid.
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There can be no profit in the making or selling of things to be destroyed in war. Men may think that they have such profit, but in the end the profit will turn out to be a loss.
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Were it not that it might require too long a discussion, it would not be difficult to demonstrate that a large and well-organized republic can scarcely lose its liberty from any other cause than that of anarchy, to which a contempt of the laws is the high-road.
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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 . . .
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As to Taxes, they are evidently inseparable from Government. It is impossible without them to pay the debts of the nation, to protect it from foreign danger, or to secure individuals from lawless violence and rapine.
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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.
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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.
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It is a singular advantage of taxes on articles of consumption that they contain in their own nature a security against excess. They prescribe their own limit, which cannot be exceeded without defeating the end purposed - that is, an extension of the revenue.
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Nothing is more natural to men in office, than to look with peculiar deference towards that authority to which they owe their official existence.
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It is evident from the state of the country, from the habits of the people, from the experience we have had on the point itself, that it is impracticable to raise any very considerable sums by direct taxation.
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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.
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If it be said that the legislative body are themselves the constitutional judges of their own powers, and that the construction they put upon them is conclusive upon the other departments, it may be answered, that this cannot be the natural presumption, where it is not be collected from any particular provisions in the Constitution.
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And it proves, in the last place, that liberty can have nothing to fear from the judiciary alone, but would have everything to fear from its union with either of the other departments.
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