"Candidly, we admit even politicians may be motivated by upright intentions."  #1 [4] "History teaches us that of the men who have overturned the liberties of republics, most began their career by proclaiming their devotion to the people.  They gain position by arousing people's prejudices and end as tyrants."   #1 [5] "This country and this people seem to have been made for each other.  It appears like this inheritance was designed by God for a band of brethren united by the strongest ties."  #2 [6] "A wise and free people must focus their attention on many objectives.  First is safety."  #3 [3] ". . . it's easy to see that jealousies and uneasiness may gradually slide into the minds and cabinets of other nations.  We can't expect them to regard our advancement in union and power, land and sea, with an eye of indifference and composure."  #4 [9] "How soon our dear-bought experience will proclaim that when a people or family divide, it never fails to be against themselves."  #4 [17] "To expect continued harmony between a number of individual, unconnected sovereignties in the same neighborhood would be to disregard the uniform course of human events, and the accumulated experience of the ages." #6 [2] "Whether favorites of a king or of people, men have too often abused their positions of public trust by using the pretext of public good to sacrifice the national tranquility for personal advantage or gratification."  #6 [3] "Isn't it time to awake from the deceitful dream of a golden age?  We must adopt the practical maxim for our political conduct that we, as well as the other inhabitants of the globe, are a long way from the happy empire of perfect wisdom and perfect virtue." #6 [18] "Safety from external danger is the most powerful motivator of national conduct.  After a time, even the ardent love of liberty will diminish under its dictates.  War's violent destruction of life and property, and the vigilance under a continuous state of danger, will compel even those nations most attached to liberty to resort, for repose and security, to institutions that tend to destroy their civil and political rights.  To be safer, they will risk being less free."  #8 [4] "Property rights originate from the people.  But the diversity in men's abilities is an insurmountable obstacle to equality of acquisitions.  Protection of these abilities is government's primary function."  #10 [6] "Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm."   #10 [9] "The minority faction may clog the government systems and convulse society, but under the Constitution it can't execute and mask its violence."   #10 [11] "Neutrality rights are respected only when defended by adequate power.  A despicably weak nation forfeits even the privilege of being neutral."  #11 [6] "Tax laws have been multiplied in vain.  New methods to enforce collection have been tried in vain.  The public expectation has been uniformly disappointed."    #12 [4]   "Power controlled or restrained is almost always the enemy of that power doing the controlling. . . administrators of individual members of an alliance will not be always ready, with perfect good humor and unbiased by the public's well being, to execute the decrees of the general authority.  So predicts the psychology of human nature." #15 [13]   "Inattention to history has been the great source of our political mistakes and allowed jealousy to point us in the wrong direction."  #17 [14]   "Experience is the oracle of truth.  When its lessons are unambiguous, they should be regarded as absolutely conclusive." #20 [24]   "When applied to taxation policy, the saying is as true as it is witty that, 'in political arithmetic, 2 and 2 do not always make 4'."  #21 [10]   "Giving a minority a negative over the majority (the consequence of requiring more than a majority for a decision), tends to subordinate the feelings of the greater number to those of the lesser."  #22 [9]   "The American empire should rest on the solid basis of the consent of the people.  The streams of national power should flow immediately from that pure, original fountain of all legitimate authority." #22 [19]   "Although a wide ocean separates the United States from Europe, circumstances warn us against being over-confident of our security."  #24 [10]   "An injudicious exercise of the authority of even the very best government can provoke and precipitate the people into the wildest excesses."   #27 [6]   "It cannot be denied that sometimes the national government may need to use force.  Our own experience corroborates the lessons taught by the examples of other nations.  Emergencies sometimes arise in all societies, however constituted.  Revolts and rebellions are, unhappily, diseases as inseparable from the political body as tumors and rashes from the natural body.  The idea of governing at all times solely by the force of law (which, we have been told, is the only admissible principle of republican government) has no place but in the daydreams of those political pundits who intellectually disdain the warnings of experience." #28 [1]