Alexander Hamilton

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

The practice of arbitrary imprisonments have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.

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.

The propriety of a law, in a constitutional light, must always be determined by the nature of the powers upon which it is founded.

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

Nothing is more natural to men in office, than to look with peculiar deference towards that authority to which they owe their official existence.

Man is very much a creature of habit. A thing that rarely strikes his senses will generally have but little influence upon his mind. A government continually at a distance and out of sight, can hardly be expected to interest the sensations of the people. The inference is, that the authority of the Union, and the affections of the citizens towards it, will be strengthened rather than weakened by its extension to what are called matters of internal concern.

These are not vague inferences . . . but they are solid conclusions drawn from the natural and necessary progress of human affairs.

The obscurity is much oftener in the passions and prejudices of the reasoner than in the subject.

Laws are a dead letter without courts to expound and define their true meaning and operation.

It is impossible to read the history of the petty republics of Greece and Italy without feeling sensations of horror and disgust at the distractions with which they were continually agitated, and at the rapid succession of revolutions by which they were kept in a state of perpetual vibration between the extremes of tyranny and anarchy . . . great improvement . . . were either not known at all, or imperfectly known to the ancients.

Energy in the executive is a leading character in the definition of good government. It is essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks; it is not less essential to the steady administration of the laws; to the protection of property against those irregular and high-handed combinations which sometimes interrupt the ordinary course of justice; to the security of liberty against the enterprises and assaults of ambition, of faction, and of anarchy.

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.

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

[V]igor of government is essential to the security of liberty.

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.

We are now forming a republican government. Real liberty is never found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments.

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.

There may be in every government a few choice spirits, who may act from more worthy motives. One great error is that we suppose mankind more honest than they are. Our prevailing passions are ambition and interest.

The passions of a revolution are apt to hurry even good men into excesses.

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