The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge right or make good decision.
Interpretation
People are often inconsistent and make poor choices due to their nature.
In this quote, Alexander Hamilton reflects on the unpredictable nature of the populace, suggesting that because people can be easily swayed and are often driven by emotions rather than reason, they may struggle to make sound judgments. This highlights the inherent challenges in governance and leadership, as decisions made in the heat of the moment may not always lead to the best outcomes for society.
In practice
During a debate on societal reforms, one could cite this quote to emphasize the challenges of public opinion.
When men, engaged in unjustifiable pursuits, are aware that obstructions may come from a quarter which bare apprehension of opposition from doing what they would with eagerness rush into if no such external impediments were to be feared.
The tendency of a national bank is to increase public and private credit. The former gives power to the state, for the protection of its rights and interests: and the latter facilitates and extends the operations of commerce among individuals. Industry is increased, commodities are multiplied, agriculture and manufacturers flourish: and herein consists the true wealth and prosperity of a state.
It's not tyranny we desire; it's a just, limited, federal government.
The Achaeans soon experienced, as often happens, that a victorious and powerful ally is but another name for a master.
The true principle of a republic is that the people should choose whom they please to govern them. Representation is imperfect, in proportion as the current of popular favor is checked. The great source of free government, popular election, should be perfectly pure, and the most unbounded liberty allowed.
Good and wise men, in all ages, have embraced a very dissimilar theory. They have supposed that the deity, from the relations we stand in to himself and to each other, has constituted an eternal and immutable law, which is indispensably obligatory upon all mankind, prior to any human institution whatever. This is what is called the law of nature....Upon this law depend the natural rights of mankind.
A beautiful vacuum filled with wealthy monogamists, all powerful and members of the best families all drinking themselves to death.
Nothing changes; we humans repeat the same sins over and over, eternally.
And for all the richest and most successful merchants life inevitably became rather dull and niggly, and they began to imagine that this was therefore the fault of the worlds they'd settled on.
Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.
The Contessa was surely way ahead of her time, too, in believing that men were not only usless and idiotic, but downright dangerous. That idea wouldn't catch on big in her native country until the last three years of the Vietnam War.
Mathematics is a logical method. . . . Mathematical propositions express no thoughts. In life it is never a mathematical proposition which we need, but we use mathematical propositions only in order to infer from propositions which do not belong to mathematics to others which equally do not belong to mathematics.
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