Every nation ought to have a right to provide for its own happiness.
Interpretation
Nations should have the autonomy to pursue what brings their people joy and fulfillment.
This quote by Alexander Hamilton emphasizes the importance of national sovereignty in determining the happiness and welfare of its citizens. It suggests that each nation should have the freedom to pursue policies and practices that align with the well-being and contentment of its people, reflecting the fundamental principle that happiness can be self-defined and pursued by each society according to its values and circumstances.
In practice
A politician might use this quote to emphasize the importance of policies that promote citizen happiness.
When men, engaged in unjustifiable pursuits, are aware that obstructions may come from a quarter which bare apprehension of opposition from doing what they would with eagerness rush into if no such external impediments were to be feared.
The tendency of a national bank is to increase public and private credit. The former gives power to the state, for the protection of its rights and interests: and the latter facilitates and extends the operations of commerce among individuals. Industry is increased, commodities are multiplied, agriculture and manufacturers flourish: and herein consists the true wealth and prosperity of a state.
It's not tyranny we desire; it's a just, limited, federal government.
The Achaeans soon experienced, as often happens, that a victorious and powerful ally is but another name for a master.
The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge right or make good decision.
The true principle of a republic is that the people should choose whom they please to govern them. Representation is imperfect, in proportion as the current of popular favor is checked. The great source of free government, popular election, should be perfectly pure, and the most unbounded liberty allowed.
Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didn't know you left open.
When you focus on what you have, your ABUNDANCE increases. I started with my breath. Noticing being alive is a good start!
The state of life is most happy where superfluities are not required and necessities are not wanting.
Living is being happy: seeing, hearing, touching, drinking, eating, urinating, defecating, diving into the water and gazing at the sky, laughing and crying.
Some of my battles with weight have been very public. But most of them have been internal. Even at my thinnest, when my body was being praised, I wasn't happy with what I saw in the mirror or how I felt about myself.
A string of excited, fugitive, miscellaneous pleasures is not happiness; happiness resides in imaginative reflection and judgment, when the picture of one's life, or of human life, as it truly has been or is, satisfies the will, and is gladly accepted.
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