Alexander Hamilton Quotes - 4 quotes

Alexander Hamilton (1755/57-1804) was a Founding Father of the United States. He is known for his influential role in shaping the nation's financial system and government structure. Born in the Caribbean, he moved to the American colonies and became a key aide to General George Washington during the Revolutionary War. Hamilton was the principal author of the Federalist Papers, which advocated for the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. As the first Secretary of the Treasury, he established the national bank and laid the foundation for the country's economic system. Hamilton's life ended tragically in a duel with Aaron Burr in 1804.

quote icon "[I]f 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. This appears to me the only substitute that can be devised for a standing army, and the best possible security against it, if it should exist."

- Alexander Hamilton

quote icon This independence of the judges is equally requisite to guard the Constitution and the rights of individuals from the effects of those ill humors, which the arts of designing men, or the influence of particular conjunctures, sometimes disseminate among the people themselves, and which, though they speedily give way to better information, and more deliberate reflection, have a tendency, in the meantime, to occasion dangerous innovations in government, and serious oppressions of the minor party in the community.

- Alexander Hamilton

quote icon For it is a truth, which the experience of ages has attested, that the people are always most in danger when the means of injuring their rights are in the possession of those of whom they entertain the least suspicion.

- Alexander Hamilton

quote icon "If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no resource left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government, and which against the usurpations of the national rulers, may be exerted with infinitely better prospect of success than against those of the rulers of an individual state. In a single state, if the persons intrusted with supreme power become usurpers, the different parcels, subdivisions, or districts of which it consists, having no distinct government in each, can take no regular measures for defense. The citizens must rush tumultuously to arms, without concert, without system, without resource; except in their courage and despair."

- Alexander Hamilton

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