Alexander Hamilton Quotes on Government (13 Quotes)

The founders established a government of checks and balances so nobody could take advantage. As for Hamilton, he set up our banking system.

When you assemble from your several counties in the Legislature, were every member to be guided only by the apparent interest of his county, government would be impracticable. There must be a perpetual accomodation and sacrifice of local advantage to general expediency.

That this gentleman President John Adams ought not to be the object of the federal wish, is, with me, reduced to demonstration. His administration has already very materially disgraced and sunk the government. There are defects in his character which must inevitably continue to do this more and more. And if he is supported by the federal party, his party must in the issue fall with him.

The Founding Fathers were careful to distinguish representative republicanism from direct democracy. Alexander Hamilton, for example, endorsed the former but condemned the latter. ...the records of the ratification conventions were not verbatim transcriptions. It has been observed, by an honorable gentleman, that a pure democracy, if it were practicable, would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position in politics is more false than this. The ancient democracies, in which the people themselves deliberated, never possessed one feature of good government. Their very character was tyranny their figure, deformity. When they assembled, the field of debate presented an ungovernable mob, not only incapable of deliberation, but prepared for every enormity.

The proposed Constitution, so far from implying an abolition of the State governments, makes them constituent parts of the national sovereignty, by allowing them a direct representation in the Senate, and leaves in their possession certain exclusive and very important portions of sovereign power. This fully corresponds, in every rational import of the terms, with the idea of a federal government.

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed, and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.

The courts must declare the sense of the law and if they should be disposed exercise will, instead of judgment, the consequences would be the substitution of their pleasure for that of the legislative body.

... if circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude, that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people, while there is a large body of citizens little if at all inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow citizens.

It's not tyranny we desire; it's a just, limited, federal government.

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.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

What plan for the regulation of the militia may be pursued by the national government is impossible to be foreseen... The project of disciplining all the militia of the United States is as futile as it would be injurious if it were capable of being carried into execution... Little more can reasonably be aimed at with the respect to the people at large than to have them properly armed and equipped and in order to see that this be not neglected, it will be necessary to assemble them once or twice in the course of a year.

The people are turbulent and changing they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct permanent share in the government... Can a democratic assembly who annually revolve in the mass of the people be supposed steadily to pursue the public good