Top 250 Alexander Hamilton Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “The genius of the people will ill brook the inquisitive and preemptory spirit of excise laws.”

— Alexander Hamilton

102. “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

103. “It is a singular advantage of taxes on articles of consumption that they contain in their own nature a security against excess. They prescribe their own limit, which cannot be exceeded without defeating the end purposed – that is, an extension of the revenue.”

— Alexander Hamilton

104. “Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.”

— Alexander Hamilton

105. “The attributes of sovereignty are now enjoyed by every state in the Union.”

— Alexander Hamilton

106. “Constitutions should consist only of general provisions; the reason is that they must necessarily be permanent, and that they cannot calculate for the possible change of things.”

— Alexander Hamilton

107. “The same state of the passions which fits the multitude, who have not a sufficient stock of reason and knowledge to guide them, for opposition to tyranny and oppression, very naturally leads them to a contempt and disregard of all authority.”

— Alexander Hamilton

108. “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.”

— Alexander Hamilton

109. “Every nation ought to have a right to provide for its own happiness.”

— Alexander Hamilton

110. “The system is the best that the present views and circumstances of the country will permit.”

— Alexander Hamilton

111. “And it proves, in the last place, that liberty can have nothing to fear from the judiciary alone, but would have everything to fear from its union with either of the other departments.”

— Alexander Hamilton

112. “Who talks most about freedom and equality? Is it not those who hold the bill of rights in one hand and a whip for affrighted slaves in the other?”

— Alexander Hamilton

113. “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

114. “The Christian Constitutional Society, its object is first: The support of the Christian religion. Second: The support of the United States.”

— Alexander Hamilton

115. “I have carefully examined the evidences of the Christian religion, and if I was sitting as a juror upon its authenticity I would unhesitatingly give my verdict in its favor. I can prove its truth as clearly as any proposition ever submitted to the mind of man.”

— Alexander Hamilton

116. “Now, mark my words. So long as we are a young and virtuous people, this instument will bind us together in mutual interests, mutual welfare, and mutual happiness. But when we become old and corrupt, it will bind no longer.”

— Alexander Hamilton

117. “There is no position which depends on clearer principles than that every act of a delegated authority, contrary to the commission under which it is exercised, is void. No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid.”

— Alexander Hamilton

118. “In the general course of human nature, A power over a man’s subsistence amounts to a power over his will.”

— Alexander Hamilton

119. “When you assemble from your several counties in the Legislature, were every member to be guided only by the apparent interest of his county, government would be impracticable. There must be a perpetual accomodation and sacrifice of local advantage to general expediency.”

— Alexander Hamilton

120. “Every man the least conversant in Roman story, knows how often that republic was obliged to take refuge in the absolute power of a single man, under the formidable title of Dictator, as well against the intrigues of ambitious individuals who aspired to the tyranny, and the seditions of whole classes of the community whose conduct threatened the existence of all government, as against the invasions of external enemies who menaced the conquest and destruction of Rome.”

— Alexander Hamilton

121. “No man in his senses can hesitate in choosing to be free, rather than a slave.”

— Alexander Hamilton

122. “The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed.”

— Alexander Hamilton

123. “Common interest may always be reckoned upon as the surest bond of sympathy.”

— Alexander Hamilton

124. “To judge from the conduct of the opposite parties, we shall be led to conclude that they will mutually hope to evince the justness of their opinions, and to increase the number of their converts by the loudness of their declamations and the bitterness of their invectives.”

— Alexander Hamilton

125. “The voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God; and, however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true to fact. The people are turbulent and changing, they seldom judge or determine right.”

— Alexander Hamilton

126. “And it is long since I have learned to hold popular opinion of no value.”

— Alexander Hamilton

127. “Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known and less fixed?”

— Alexander Hamilton

128. “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

129. “So numerous indeed and so powerful are the causes which serve to give a false bias to the judgment, that we, upon many occasions, see wise and good men on the wrong as well as on the right side of questions of the first magnitude to society. This circumstance, if duly attended to, would furnish a lesson of moderation to those who are ever so much persuaded of their being in the right in any controversy.”

— Alexander Hamilton

130. “These powers ought to exist without limitation, because it is impossible to foresee or to define the extent and variety of national exigencies, and the correspondent extent and variety of the means which may be necessary to satisfy them.”

— Alexander Hamilton

131. “Self-preservation is the first principle of our nature.”

— Alexander Hamilton

132. “Government implies the power of making laws. It is essential to the idea of a law, that it be attended with a sanction; or, in other words, a penalty or punishment for disobedience.”

— Alexander Hamilton

133. “The changes in the human condition are uncertain and frequent. Many, on whom fortune has bestowed her favours, may trace their family to a more unprosperous station; and many who are now in obscurity, may look back upon the affluence and exalted rank of their ancestors.”

— Alexander Hamilton

134. “Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.”

— Alexander Hamilton

135. “Among the most formidable of the obstacles which the new Constitution will have to encounter may readily be distinguished the obvious interest of a certain class of men in every State to resist all changes which may hazard a diminution of the power, emolument, and consequence of the offices they hold under the State establishments;.”

— Alexander Hamilton

136. “Its objects are CONTRACTS with foreign nations which have the force of law, but derive it from the obligations of good faith.”

— Alexander Hamilton

137. “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

138. “Tyranny has perhaps oftener grown out of the assumptions of power, called for, on pressing exigencies, by a defective constitution, than out of the full exercise of the largest constitutional authorities.”

— Alexander Hamilton

139. “When human laws contradict or discountenance the means, which are necessary to preserve the essential rights of any society, they defeat the proper end of all laws, and so become null and void.”

— Alexander Hamilton

140. “An enlightened zeal for the energy and efficiency of government will be stigmatized, as the offspring of a temper fond of despotic power, and hostile to the principles of liberty.”

— Alexander Hamilton

141. “It is astonishing that so simple a truth should ever have had an adversary; and it is one among a multitude of proofs, how apt a spirit of ill-informed jealousy, or of too great abstraction and refinement is to lead men astray from the plainest paths of reason and conviction.”

— Alexander Hamilton

142. “Hence, in a state of nature, no man had any moral power to deprive another of his life, limbs, property, or liberty; nor the least authority to command or exact obedience from him, except that which arose from the ties of consanguinity.”

— Alexander Hamilton

143. “It is far more rational to suppose that the courts were designed to be an intermediate body between the people and the legislature, in order, among other things, to keep the latter within the limits assigned to their authority.”

— Alexander Hamilton

144. “A garden, you know, is a very usual refuge of a disappointed politician. Accordingly, I have purchased a few acres about nine miles from town, have built a house, and am cultivating a garden.”

— Alexander Hamilton

145. “To be more safe, they at length become willing to run the risk of being less free.”

— Alexander Hamilton

146. “This process of election affords a moral certainty that the office of President will seldom fall to the lot of any many who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.”

— Alexander Hamilton

147. “A LAW, by the very meaning of the term, includes supremacy. It is a rule which those to whom it is prescribed are bound to observe. This results from every political association.”

— Alexander Hamilton

148. “Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of man will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.”

— Alexander Hamilton

149. “By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”

— Alexander Hamilton

150. “It is very extraordinary, if the head of the money department of a country, being unprincipled enough to sacrifice his trust and his integrity, could not have contrived objects of profit sufficiently large to have engaged the co-operation of men of far greater importance than Reynolds, and with whom there could have been due safety, and should have been driven to the necessity of unkennelling such a reptile to be the instrument of his cupidity.”

— Alexander Hamilton