Alexander Hamilton Quotes

The Founding Fathers gladly sacrificed government that could provide speedy, effective, cohesive, and internally consistent policies. They opted for one that had a maximum number of veto points and checks and balances and protections against tyranny by particular officials or tyranny by selfish majorities.

The framers of the American Constitution were far from wishing or intending to found a democracy in the strict sense of the word, though, as was inevitable, every expansion of the scheme of government they elaborated has been in a democratical direction. But this has been generally the slow result of growth, and not the sudden innovation of theory…

Our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here, the people rule.

I do not conceive God did ever ordain [democracy] as a fit government for either church or commonwealth …. As for monarchy and aristocracy, they are both clearly approved and directed in the Scriptures.

We need a strong state but we need a democratic one.

A constitutional democracy like ours is perhaps the most difficult of man's social arrangements to manage successfully. Our scheme of society is more dependent than any other form of government on knowledge and wisdom and self-discipline for the achievement of its aims. For our democracy implies the reign of reason on the most extensive scale.

Constitutional democracy is a Western idea.

The founding fathers hated two things, one was monarchy and the other was, democracy, they gave us a constitution that saw to it we will have neither.

Our Founding Fathers crafted a constitutional Republic for the first time in the history of the world because they were shaping a form of government that would not have the failures of a democracy in it, but had the representation of democracy in it.

It is foolishly thought by some that democratical constitutions will not, cannot, last; that the States will quarrel with each other; that a king, or at least a nobility, are indispensable for the prosperity of a nation.

The real difference between the United States and other nations lies not in the words of the preamble to the Constitution, but in the fact that the substantive clauses of that Constitution are enforced by individuals independent of and not beholden to the elected branches.

Democracy is good, provided the government can function.

Representative democracy has for its characteristic object and effect…securing its members against oppression and depredation at the hands of those functionaries which it employs for its defense.

Nobody expects democracy to be efficient--individual freedom was the primary purpose of our founders - but it should function at least a little

The litmus test of democracy is the subordination of military power to civilian authority …

The American system is no longer a democracy. Democracy is based on accountability and it's not there now.

The United States is dangerously close to becoming a democracy instead of a republic.

One of the distinctions between democracy and other forms of government is that while democracy is messy on the surface, other forms of government are messy underneath.

The original Constitution was devoted primarily to the mechanisms of democratic choice.... [It] provided wide powers to the representative assemblies and ruled only a few subjects off limits by the Constitution.

The federal constitution is perhaps the greatest of human experiments.

The democratic element has a fortunate effect in the political sphere when it is balanced by another force. We have this advantage over our neighbors, the Americans, who have extreme democracy.

Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

The founding fathers set up this country as a republic—not a democracy.

We live in a democracy which can be destroyed if judges function as Platonic guardians.

The existence of parties is not necessary to a free government.