Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.
NUMBER:
721
AUTHOR:
Alexander Hamilton (1755–1804)
QUOTATION:
The system … is the best that the present views and circumstances of the country will permit.
ATTRIBUTION:
ALEXANDER HAMILTON, The Federalist, ed. Benjamin F. Wright, no. 85, p. 544 (1961).
Hamilton acknowledged the imperfect nature of the government that would result from adopting the Constitution, but he felt it imprudent “to prolong the precarious state of our national affairs … in the chimerical pursuit of the perfect plan.”
