The true principle of government is this - make the system compleat in its structure; give a perfect proportion and balance to its parts; and the powers you give it will never affect your security.
Interpretation
A well-structured government should be balanced to ensure the safety of its citizens.
In this quote, Alexander Hamilton emphasizes the fundamental importance of a well-structured government. He argues that by creating a system that is balanced and proportionate in its various components, the powers granted to that government will not endanger the security and rights of the people. This illustrates the idea that good governance is inherently linked to the protections it affords to its citizens.
In practice
During a debate on political structure, you might reference this quote to argue for the necessity of balance in governance.
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.
And so I learned that familiar paths traced in the dusk of summer evenings may lead as well to prison as to innocent untroubled sleep.
As bad as it might be to destroy a creature made in God's image, it might be very much worse to be creating them after images of one's own.
The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.
The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry.
It offended his sense of himself, because he was an individual from an age of individuals, and a string of lights was, like him, an individual thing. No matter how little the thing had cost, to throw it away was to deny its value.
I was anti-everything and everyone. I didn't want people around me. This aversion was not some big crippling anxiety; merely a mature recognition of my own psychological vulnerability and my lack of suitability as a companion. Thoughts jostled for space in my crowded brain as i struggled to give them some order which might serve to motivate my listless life.
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