Alexander Hamilton was George Washington’s right-hand man during the Revolutionary War. He
was instrumental in the defeat of the British at Yorktown. He was one of the authors of the Federalist Papers, and he served as the first Secretary of the Treasury. Here are some of his best quotes:
“The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for, among old parchments, or musty
records. They are written, as with a sun beam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand
of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.”
“The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of THE CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE. The streams of national power ought to flow from that pure, original fountain of all legitimate authority.”
“Here sir, the people govern; here they act by their immediate representatives.”
“Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of man will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.”
“The instrument by which it [government] must act are either the AUTHORITY of the laws or FORCE. If the first be destroyed, the last must be substituted; and where this becomes the ordinary instrument of government there is an end to liberty!”
“Government implies the power of making laws. It is essential to the idea of a law, that it be attended with a sanction; or, in other words, a penalty or punishment for disobedience. If there be no penalty annexed to disobedience, the resolutions or commands which pretend to be laws will, in fact, amount to nothing more than advice or recommendation”
“If it be asked, What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? The answer would be, An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws, the first growing out of the last…. A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government.”
“The fundamental source of all your errors, sophisms and false reasonings is a total ignorance
of the natural rights of mankind. Were you once to become acquainted with these, you could never
entertain a thought, that all men are not, by nature, entitled to a parity of privileges.”
“You would be convinced, that natural liberty is a gift of the beneficent Creator to the whole human
race, and that civil liberty is founded in that; and cannot be wrested from any people, without the
most manifest violation of justice.”
“It was certainly true: that nothing like an equality of property existed: that an inequality would exist as long as liberty existed, and that it would unavoidably result from that very liberty itself.”