Alexander Hamilton Quotes

Mankind are governed more by their feelings than by reason. Events which excite those feelings will produce wonderful effects.

You will find that reason, which always ought to direct mankind, seldom does; but that passions and weaknesses commonly usurp itsseat, and rule in its stead.

Reason is the historian, but passions are the actors.

A good deal of our politics is psychological.

Politics ought to be adjusted not to human reasonings but to human nature, of which reason is but a part and by no means the greatest part.

Logic, sometimes has very little to do with political action.

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.

In bridge clubs and in councils of state, the passions are the same.

Men are rather reasoning than reasonable animals, for the most part governed by the impulse of passion.

Too many people in this town think about politics when they make every decision.

… people are far from acting generally according to the dictates of their interests, but oftener in consequence of their passions, though it may even prove injurious to their interests.

Men are rather reasoning than reasonable animals for the most part governed by the impulse of passion. This is a truth well understood by our adversaries who have practised upon it with no small benefit to their cause. For at the very moment they are eulogizing the reason of men & professing to appeal only to that faculty, they are courting the strongest & most active passion of the human heart - VANITY!

The passions of men are commonly more potent than their reason.

Irrational passions would seem to be as much a part of human nature as is reason.

We have lost confidence in reason because we have learned that man is chiefly a creature of habit and emotion.

Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.

A true history of human events would show that a far larger proportion of our acts are the result of sudden impulse and accident than of that reason of which we so much boast.

Politics is human beings; it's addition rather than subtraction.

Reason has not tamed desire: it is as strong as ever.

Opinion is ultimately determined by the feelings, and not by the intellect.

As reason is a rebel to faith, so passion is a rebel to reason.

If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins.

I mean that I think I find the psychology of people more interesting than politics. I think the psychology of politics is more interesting than straight politics.

Economists think about what people ought to do. Psychologists watch what they actually do.

This idea that a book can either be about character and feeling, or about politics and idea, is just a false binary. Ideas are an expression of the feelings and the intense emotions we hold about the world.