Top 250 Alexander Hamilton Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government.”

— Alexander Hamilton

52. “As to religion a moderate stock will satisfy me. She must believe in god and hate a saint.”

— Alexander Hamilton

53. “The citizens of America have too much discernment to be argued into anarchy. And I am much mistaken, if experience has not wrought a deep and solemn conviction in the public mind, that greater energy of government is essential to the welfare and prosperity of the community.”

— Alexander Hamilton

54. “Civil liberty is only natural liberty, modified and secured by the sanctions of civil society. It is not a thing, in its own nature, precarious and dependent on human will and caprice; but it is conformable to the constitution of man, as well as necessary to the well-being of society.”

— Alexander Hamilton

55. “I would die to preserve the law upon a solid foundation; but take away liberty, and the foundation is destroyed.”

— Alexander Hamilton

56. “A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a national blessing.”

— Alexander Hamilton

57. “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

58. “Schemes to subvert the liberties of a great community require time to mature them for execution.”

— Alexander Hamilton

59. “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

60. “Our great error is that we suppose mankind to be more honest than they are.”

— Alexander Hamilton

61. “Take mankind in general, they are vicious-their passions may be operated upon.”

— Alexander Hamilton

62. “To model our political system upon speculations of lasting tranquility, is to calculate on the weaker springs of the human character.”

— Alexander Hamilton

63. “Necessity, especially in politics, often occasions false hopes, false reasonings, and a system of measures, correspondingly erroneous.”

— Alexander Hamilton

64. “The obscurity is more often in the passions and prejudices of the reasoner than in the subject.”

— Alexander Hamilton

65. “A fondness for power is implanted in most men, and it is natural to abuse it when acquired.”

— Alexander Hamilton

66. “When a government betrays the people by amassing too much power and becoming tyrannical, the people have no choice but to exercise their original right of self-defense – to fight the government.”

— Alexander Hamilton

67. “The local interest of a State ought in every case to give way to the interests of the Union. For when a sacrifice of one or the other is necessary, the former becomes only an apparent, partial interest, and should yield, on the principle that the smaller good ought never to oppose the greater good.”

— Alexander Hamilton

68. “An over-scrupulous jealousy of danger to the rights of the people, which is more commonly the fault of the head than of the heart, will be represented as mere pretense and artifice, the stale bait for popularity at the expense of the public good.”

— Alexander Hamilton

69. “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.”

— Alexander Hamilton

70. “Is it not time to awake from the deceitful dream of a golden age, and to adopt as a practical maxim for the direction of our political conduct, that we, as well as the other inhabitants of the globe, are yet remote from the happy empire of perfect wisdom and perfect virtue?”

— Alexander Hamilton

71. “If we incline too much to democracy, we shall soon shoot into a monarchy.”

— Alexander Hamilton

72. “Foreign influence is truly the Grecian horse to a republic. We cannot be too careful to exclude its influence.”

— Alexander Hamilton

73. “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

74. “That experience is the parent of wisdom is an adage the truth of which is recognized by the wisest as well as the simplest of mankind.”

— Alexander Hamilton

75. “The prosperity of commerce is now perceived and acknowledged by all enlightened statesmen to be the most useful as well as the most productive source of national wealth, and has accordingly become a primary object of their political cares.”

— Alexander Hamilton

76. “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

77. “The rights of neutrality will only be respected when they are defended by an adequate power. A nation, despicable by its weakness, forfeits even the privilege of being neutral.”

— Alexander Hamilton

78. “For my part, I sincerely esteem the Constitution, a system which without the finger of God, never could have been suggested and agreed upon by such a diversity of interests.”

— Alexander Hamilton

79. “The truth is, after all the declamations we have heard, that the Constitution is itself, in every rational sense, and to every useful purpose, A BILL OF RIGHTS.”

— Alexander Hamilton

80. “Opinion, whether well or ill-founded, is the governing principle of human affairs.”

— Alexander Hamilton

81. “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

82. “After an unequivocal experience of the inefficacy of the subsisting federal government, you are called upon to deliberate on a new Constitution for the United States of America.”

— Alexander Hamilton

83. “Man is a reasoning rather than a reasonable animal.”

— Alexander Hamilton

84. “No character, however upright, is a match for constantly reiterated attacks, however false.”

— Alexander Hamilton

85. “In testimony of their Respect For The Patriot of incorruptible Integrity, The Soldier of approved Valour The Statesman of consummate Wisdom; Whose Talents and Virtues will be admired By Grateful Posterity Long after this Marble shall have mouldered into Dust.”

— Alexander Hamilton

86. “Responsibility, in order to be reasonable, must be limited to objects within the power of the responsible party, and in order to be effectual, must relate to operations of that power, of which a ready and proper judgment can be formed by the constituents.”

— Alexander Hamilton

87. “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.”

— Alexander Hamilton

88. “Those who do not industrialize become hewers of wood and hawkers of water.”

— Alexander Hamilton

89. “Best of wives and best of women.”

— Alexander Hamilton

90. “In politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution.”

— Alexander Hamilton

91. “The great leading objects of the federal government, in which revenue is concerned, are to maintain domestic peace, and provide for the common defense.”

— Alexander Hamilton

92. “If we are in earnest about giving the Union energy and duration we must abandon the vain project of legislating upon the States in their collective capacities.”

— Alexander Hamilton

93. “To my utter astonishment I saw an airship descending over my cow lot. It was occupied by six of the strangest beings I ever saw. They were jabbering together, but we could not understand a word they said...”

— Alexander Hamilton

94. “To judge from the history of mankind, we shall be compelled to conclude, that the fiery and destructive passions of war, reign in the human breast, with much more powerful sway, than the mild and beneficent sentiments of peace.”

— Alexander Hamilton

95. “If mankind were to resolve to agree in no institution of government, until every part of it had been adjusted to the most exact standard of perfection, society would soon become a general scene of anarchy, and the world a desert.”

— Alexander Hamilton

96. “There are seasons in every country when noise and impudence pass current for worth; and in popular commotions especially, the clamors of interested and factious men are often mistaken for patriotism.”

— Alexander Hamilton

97. “Caution and investigation are a necessary armor against error and imposition.”

— Alexander Hamilton

98. “Men are rather reasoning than reasonable animals for the most part governed by the impulse of passion.”

— Alexander Hamilton

99. “The natural cure for an ill-administration, in a popular or representative constitution, is a change of men.”

— Alexander Hamilton

100. “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.”

— Alexander Hamilton