Quote

To watch the progress of such endeavors is the office of a free press. To give us early alarm and put us on our guard against encroachments of power. This then is a right of utmost importance, one for which, instead of yielding it up, we ought rather to spill our blood.

Alexander Hamilton

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Alexander Hamilton
Ought
Press
Endeavors
Blood
Importance
Alarm
Rather
Early
Spills
Free
Watches
Alarms
Power
Office
Utmost
Encroachments
Give
Watch
Guard
Encroachment
Right
Instead
Endeavor
Yielding
Giving
Progress
Presses
Spill

More quotes by Alexander Hamilton

Image
Nothing is more natural to men in office, than to look with peculiar deference towards that authority to which they owe their official existence.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
Such a wife as I want... must be young, handsome I lay most stress upon a good shape, sensible a little learning will do, well-bread, chaste, and tender. As to religion, a moderate stock will satisfy me. She must believe in God and hate a saint.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
Man is a reasoning rather than a reasonable animal.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
[I]n framing a Government for a nation we ought, in those provisions which are designed to be permanent, to calculate not on temporary, but on permanent causes of expence.
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
[A] power equal to every possible contingency must exist somewhere in the government . . .
Alexander Hamilton
Image
If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
They are not rules prescribed by the sovereign to the subject, but agreements between sovereign and sovereign.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
Measures which serve to abridge the free competition of foreign Articles, have a tendency to occasion an enhancement of prices.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
There is at this present juncture, a certain fermentation of mind, a certain activity of speculation and enterprise which if properly directed may be made subservient to useful purposes but which if left entirely to itself, may be attended with pernicious effects.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
Hard words are very rarely useful. Real firmness is good for every thing. Strut is good for nothing.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
To presume a want of motives for such contests . . . would be to forget that men are ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
As on the one hand, the necessity for borrowing in particular emergencies cannot be doubted, so on the other, it is equally evident that to be able to borrow upon good terms, it is essential that the credit of a nation should be well established.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
Every individual of the community at large has an equal right to the protection of government.
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
It will follow that that government ought to be clothed with all powers requisite to complete execution of its trust.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
The powers contained in a constitution...ought to be construed liberally in advancement of the public good.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
The idea of restraining the legislative authority, in the means of providing for the national defense, is one of those refinements which owe their origin to a zeal for liberty more ardent than enlightened.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
Civil liberty is only natural liberty, modified and secured by the sanctions of civil society.
Alexander Hamilton
Image
As riches increase and accumulate in few hands . . . the tendency of things will be to depart from the republican standard.
Alexander Hamilton