Alexander Hamilton
(January 11, 1755 or 1757 – July 12, 1804)

was an American politician, leading statesman, financier, intellectual, military officer, and founder of the Federalist Party. One of America's foremost constitutional lawyers, he was an influential delegate to the U.S. Constitutional Convention in 1787 and was the leading author of the Federalist Papers (1788), which has been the single most important interpretation of the Constitution ever since. 
He was the first and most influential Secretary of the Treasury and had much influence over the rest of the Government and the formation of policy, including foreign policy.

It has been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity. June 21, 1788

If circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens. This appears to me the only substitute that can be devised for a standing army, and the best possible security against it, if it should exist.

A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one.

I have a tender reliance on the mercy of the Almighty, through the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ. I am a sinner. I look to Him for mercy; pray for me.

I have learned to hold popular opinion of no value.

It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.

This is the constitution... Now, mark my words. So long as we are a young and virtuous people, this instrument will bind us together in mutual interests, mutual welfare, and mutual happiness. But when we become old and corrupt, it will bind no longer.

Those who stand for nothing fall for anything.