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The Liberty of the press consists in the right to publish with impunity truth with good motives for justifiable ends, though reflecting on government, magistracy, or individuals.

Alexander Hamilton

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More quotes by Alexander Hamilton

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A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government.
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Self-preservation is the first principle of our nature.
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It will be well to advert to the proportion between the objects that will require a federal provision in respect to revenue and those which will require a state provision. We shall discover that the former are altogether unlimited and that the latter are circumscribed within very moderate bounds.
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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.
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To cherish and stimulate the activity of the human mind, by multiplying the objects of enterprise, is not among the least considerable of the expedients, by which the wealth of a nation may be promoted.
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The powers contained in a constitution...ought to be construed liberally in advancement of the public good.
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The genius of the people will ill brook the inquisitive and peremptory spirit of excise laws.
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Government is frequently and aptly classed under two descriptions-a government of force, and a government of laws the first is the definition of despotism-the last, of liberty.
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It will be forgotten, on the one hand, that jealousy is the usual concomitant of violent love, and that the noble enthusiasm of liberty is too apt to be infected with a spirit of narrow and illiberal distrust. On the other hand, it will be equally forgotten, that the vigour of government is essential to the security of liberty.
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Laws are a dead letter without courts to expound and define their true meaning and operation.
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It was remarked yesterday that a numerous representation was necessary to obtain the confidence of the people. This is not generally true. The confidence of the people will easily be gained by a good administration. This is the true touchstone.
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A nation has a right to manage its own concerns as it thinks fit.
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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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How can you trust people who are poor and own no property? ... Inequality of property will exist as long as liberty exists.
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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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There can be no time, no state of things, in which Credit is not essential to a Nation.
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There is perhaps, nothing more likely to disturb the tranquillity of nations, than their being bound to mutual contributions for any common object that does not yield an equal and coincident benefit. For it is an observation as true, as it is trite, that there is nothing men differ so readily about as the payment of money.
Alexander Hamilton
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As the duties of superintending the national defense and of securing the public peace against foreign or domestic violence involve a provision for casualties and dangers to which no possible limits can be assigned, the power of making that provision ought to know no other bounds than the exigencies of the nation and the resources of the community.
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Every power vested in a government is in its nature sovereign, and includes by force of the term a right to employ all the means requisite . . . to the attainment of the ends of such power.
Alexander Hamilton
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If there are such things as political axioms, the propriety of the judicial power of a government being co-extensive with its legislative, may be ranked among the number.
Alexander Hamilton