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.
Interpretation
A well-structured government should be balanced to ensure the safety of its citizens.
In this quote, Alexander Hamilton emphasizes the fundamental importance of a well-structured government. He argues that by creating a system that is balanced and proportionate in its various components, the powers granted to that government will not endanger the security and rights of the people. This illustrates the idea that good governance is inherently linked to the protections it affords to its citizens.
In practice
During a debate on political structure, you might reference this quote to argue for the necessity of balance in governance.
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 people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge right or make good decision.
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.
Whence, then, this worship of the past? The centuries are conspirators against the sanity and authority of the soul.
Skepticism, riddling the faith of yesterday, prepared the way for the faith of tomorrow.
Human history can be viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group Groups of people from divergent ethnic and cultural backgrounds working in some sense together [is] surely a humanizing and character building experience. If we are to survive, our loyalties must be broadened further, to include the whole human community, the entire planet Earth.
I am Shiva-this is the great meditation of the yogis in the Himalayas...Hea ven and hell are within us, and all the gods are within us. This is the great realization of the Upanishads of India in the ninth century B.C. All the gods, all the heavens, all the worlds, are within us. They are magnified dreams, and dreams are manifestations in image form of the energies of the body in conflict with each other.
Americans are overreaching; overreaching is the most admirable and most American of the many American excesses.
There's hostility to lying, and there should be.
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