Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Alexander Hamilton
Character
Assembly
Athenian
Still
Fails
Wrest
Reason
Citizen
Sceptre
Every
Failing
Assemblies
Never
Citizens
Athenians
Would
Passion
Socrates
Whatever
Numerous
Stills
Composed

More quotes by Alexander Hamilton

Image
The system is the best that the present views and circumstances of the country will permit.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
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
Image
If the Constitution is adopted (and it was) the Union will be in fact and in theory an association of States or a Confederacy.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
There is one transcendant advantage belonging to the province of the State governments . . . -I mean the ordinary administration of criminal and civil justice.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
The origin of all civil government, justly established, must be a voluntary compact, between the rulers and the ruled and must be liable to such limitations, as are necessary for the security of the absolute rights of the latter for what original title can any man or set of men have, to govern others, except their own consent?
Alexander Hamilton
Image
They are not rules prescribed by the sovereign to the subject, but agreements between sovereign and sovereign.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
[T]he Constitution ought to be the standard of construction for the laws, and that wherever there is an evident opposition, the laws ought to give place to the Constitution. But this doctrine is not deducible from any circumstance peculiar to the plan of convention, but from the general theory of a limited Constitution.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
The treaties of the United States, to have any force at all, must be considered as part of the law of the land.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
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
Image
The increasing remoteness of consanguinity is everyday diminishing the force of the family compact between France and Spain. And politicians have ever with great reason considered the ties of blood as feeble and precarious links of political connection.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
It will follow that that government ought to be clothed with all powers requisite to complete execution of its trust.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
The experience of past ages may inform us, that when the circumstances of a people render them distressed, their rulers generally recur to severe, cruel, and oppressive measures. Instead of endeavoring to establish their authority in the affection of their subjects, they think they have no security but in their fear.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
In disquisitions of every kind there are certain primary truths, or first principles, upon which all subsequent reasoning must depend.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
Jurors should acquit, even against the judge's instruction . . . if exercising their judgment with discretion and honesty they have a clear conviction the charge of the court is wrong.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
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
Image
The principal purposes to be answered by union are these the common defense of the members the preservation of the public peace as well against internal convulsions as external attacks the regulation of commerce with other nations and between the States the superintendence of our intercourse, political and commercial, with foreign countries.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
And as the vicissitudes of Nations beget a perpetual tendency to the accumulation of debt, there ought to be in every government a perpetual, anxious, and unceasing effort to reduce that, which at any times exists, as fast as shall be practicable consistently with integrity and good faith.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
The same rule that teaches the propriety of a partition between the various branches of power, teaches us likewise that this partition ought to be so contrived as to render the one independent of the other.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
The honor of a nation is its life. Deliberately to abandon it is to commit an act of political suicide.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
I have a tender reliance on the mercy of the Almighty, through the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ. I am a sinner. I look to Him for mercy pray for me.
Alexander Hamilton