Alexander Hamilton

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

War, like most other things, is a science to be acquired and perfected by diligence, by perserverance, by time, and by practice.

Let experience, the least fallible guide of human opinion, be appealed to for an answer to these inquiries.

The history of ancient and modern republics had taught them that many of the evils which those republics suffered arose from the want of a certain balance, and that mutual control indispensable to a wise administration. They were convinced that popular assemblies are frequently misguided by ignorance, by sudden impulses, and the intrigues of ambitious men; and that some firm barrier against these operations was necessary. They, therefore, instituted your Senate.

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

In so strong a light, nevertheless, do they appear to the Secretary, that, on their due observance, at the present critical juncture, materially depend, in his judgment, the individual and aggregate prosperity of the citizens of the United States; their relief from the embarrassments they now experience; their character as a people; the cause of good government.

Nothing can be more evident, than that an exclusive power of regulating elections for the National Government, in the hands of the State Legislatures, would leave the existence of the Union entirely at their mercy . . . . It is to little purpose to say that a neglect or omission of this kind [not letting the feds have elections], would be unlikely to take place. The constitutional possibility of the thing, without an equivalent for the risk, is an unanswerable objection.

There is one transcendant advantage belonging to the province of the State governments . . . -I mean the ordinary administration of criminal and civil justice.

There are some who maintain that trade will regulate itself, and it is not to be benefited by the encouragements or restraints of government. Such persons will imagine that there is no need of a common directing power. This is one of those wild speculative paradoxes, which have grown into credit among us, contrary to the uniform practice and sense of the most enlightened nations.

People sometimes attribute my success to my genius; all the genius I know anything about is hard work.

If the Constitution is adopted (and it was) the Union will be in fact and in theory an association of States or a Confederacy.

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.

The idea of governing at all times by the simple force of law (which we have been told is the only admissible principle of republican government) has no place but in the reveries of those political doctors whose sagacity disdains the admonitions of experimental instruction.

The true principle of government is this - make the system compleat in its structure; give a perfect proportion and balance to its parts; and the powers you give it will never affect your security.

Were not the disadvantages of slavery too obvious to stand in need of it, I might enumerate and describe the tedious train of calamities inseparable from it. I might show that it is fatal to religion and morality; that it tends to debase the mind, and corrupt its noblest springs of action. I might show that it relaxes the sinews of industry, clips the wings of commerce, and introduces misery and indigence in every shape.

The republican principle demands that the deliberate sense of the community should govern the conduct of those to whom they intrust the management of their affairs; but it does not require an unqualified complaisance to every sudden breeze of passion or to every transient impulse which the people may receive from the arts of men, who flatter their prejudices to betray their interests.

There can be no limitation of that authority which is to provide for the defense and protection of the community in any matter essential to the formation, direction, or support of the NATIONAL FORCES.

Every individual of the community at large has an equal right to the protection of government.

Safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national conduct. To be more safe, [nations] at length become willing to run the risk of being less free.

The people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government and to reform, alter, or totally change the same when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it.

A well adjusted person is one who makes the same mistake twice without getting nervous.