Alexander Hamilton Quotes

"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

"A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a national blessing."
-Alexander Hamilton

"A promise must never be broken."
-Alexander Hamilton in Commitment quotes.

"A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one."
-Alexander Hamilton

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

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything."
-Alexander Hamilton

"Every man ought to be supposed a knave, and to have no other end, in all his actions, but private interest. By this interest we must govern him, and by means of it, make him cooperate to public good, notwithstanding his unsatiable avarice and ambition."
-Alexander Hamilton

"The same state of the passions which fits the multitude, who have not 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

"Power over a man's subsistence is power over his will."
-Alexander Hamilton in Power quotes.

"Your people, sir, is nothing but a great beast."
-Alexander Hamilton

"Man is a reasoning rather than a reasonable animal."
-Alexander Hamilton

"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

"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

"It is long since I have learned to hold popular opinion of no value."
-Alexander Hamilton

"Men give me credit for some genius. All the genius I have is this. When I have a subject in mind. I study it profoundly. Day and night it is before me. My mind becomes pervaded with it... the effort which I have made is what people are pleased to call the fruit of genius. It is the fruit of labor and thought."
-Alexander Hamilton

"It has been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity."
-Alexander Hamilton

"When men exercise their reason coolly and freely on a variety of distinct questions, they inevitably fall into different opinions on some of them. When they are governed by a common passion, their opinions, if they are to be called, will be the same."
-Alexander Hamilton in Opinions quotes.