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[In the event of war, Americans would] resort for repose and security to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe they, at length, become willing to run the risk of being less free.

Alexander Hamilton

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More quotes by Alexander Hamilton

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Allow a government to decline paying its debts and you overthrow all public morality-you unhinge all the principles that preserve the limits of free constitutions. Nothing can more affect national prosperity than a constant and systematic attention to extinguish the present debt and to avoid as much as possibly the incurring of any new debt.
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Here, sir, the people govern here they act by their immediate representatives.
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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.
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If the Constitution is adopted (and it was) the Union will be in fact and in theory an association of States or a Confederacy.
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A feeble executive implies a feeble execution of the government. A feeble execution is but another phrase for a bad execution and a government ill executed, whatever may be its theory, must be, in practice, a bad government.
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Though a wide ocean separates the United States from Europe, yet there are various considerations that warn us against an excess of confidence or security.
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In the general course of human nature, A power over a man's subsistence amounts to a power over his will.
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If it were to be asked, What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? The answer would be, An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws - the first growing out of the last . . . . A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government.
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Unless your government is respectable, foreigners will invade your rights and to maintain tranquillity you must be respectable even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.
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People sometimes attribute my success to my genius all the genius I know anything about is hard work.
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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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But as the plan of the convention aims only at a partial union or consolidation, the State governments would clearly retain all the rights of sovereignty which they before had, and which were not, by that act, EXCLUSIVELY delegated to the United States.
Alexander Hamilton
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In this distribution of powers the wisdom of our constitution is manifested. It is the province and duty of the Executive to preserve to the Nation the blessings of peace. The Legislature alone can interrupt those blessings, by placing the Nation in a state of War.
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Let experience, the least fallible guide of human opinion, be appealed to for an answer to these inquiries.
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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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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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Divide et impera must be the motto of every nation that either hates or fears us.
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The attributes of sovereignty are now enjoyed by every state in the Union.
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There are men who could neither be distressed nor won into a sacrifice of their duty but this stern virtue is the growth of few soils: And in the main it will be found, that a power over a man's support is a power over his will.
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The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed.
Alexander Hamilton