Quotes from Ron Chernow

From the outset, Rockefeller had to wrestle with the demons of pride and greed.

Whatever may have been my political opinions before I have but one sentiment now. That is we have a Government, and laws and a flag and they must all be sustained. There are but two parties now, Traitors & Patriots and I want hereafter to be ranked with the latter.

Rockefeller tended to portray himself as a hard-driving executive who went as far as the law allowed but not an inch further.

elite pedigree on both sides of his family, Jefferson was anything but common. His father, Peter, was a tobacco planter, a judge of the court of chancery, and a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, while his mother, Jane Randolph, came from a prominent family. By the time Peter Jefferson died, he bequeathed to his children more than 60 slaves, 25 horses, 70 head of cattle, 200 hogs, and 7,500 acres; two-thirds of this bountiful legacy went to his eldest son, Thomas.

To form a new government requires infinite care and unbounded attention, for if the foundation is badly laid, the superstructure must be bad.

Except for Florida, every southern state joined in the program.

Still, he wondered whether republican government could withstand popular frenzy and instill the deep respect for law and authority that obtained in monarchical systems and that would safeguard liberties.

Rockefeller's philanthropy was relatively discreet.

It might have been friction over this issue that caused their relationship to cool in the late 1890s.

Conversely, the failures that a man makes in his life are due almost always to some defect in his personality

To endure such suffering required stoicism reminiscent of the ancient Romans, so Washington had his favorite play, Addison's Cato, the story of a self-sacrificing Roman statesman, staged at Valley Forge to buck up his weary men.

It was a lesson in self-reliance.

When rebuffed by a bank officer for a loan, he shot back in anger, "Some day I'll be the richest man in the world.

Most important, the states had set up machinery to perpetuate the work and avert backsliding.

Se John Kirwan Venton tinha esperanças de pôr as mãos na herança de Ann, foi frustrado pela prudência do sogro, que deixou dois sétimos de seu patrimônio para Ann, mas especificou que Venton estaria excluído do dinheiro, referindo-se a ele como pessoa "lamentável em sua conduta".

My brave fellows," he said, "you have done all I asked you to do and more than could be reasonably expected. But your country is at stake, your wives, your houses, and all that you hold dear . . . If you will consent to stay one month longer, you will render that service to the cause of liberty and to your country which you probably can never do under any other circumstances.

His eyes were fixed straight ahead.

He went through the week cautioning himself with proverbs taught by Eliza, such as "Pride goeth before a fall," and this spiritual self-scrutiny intensified with his growing wealth.

For a long time, he had resisted an irreversible shift to pipes for fear of antagonizing the railroads, but this concern had lost its force. When Standard Oil constructed four pipelines from western Pennsylvania to Cleveland, New York, Philadelphia, and Buffalo, he pressured the railroads to grant it right-of-way concessions, even though the pipelines signaled their doom.

They came up with a way to create the illusion that all shippers paid the identical posted rates while Standard Oil was compensated secretly through an accounting gimmick.

Instead of making isolated gifts, Rockefeller wanted to finance institutions whose research would have a pervasive influence.

At twenty-eight, he married a young widow, Martha Wayles Skelton, who inherited 135 slaves after her father's death. This loving ten-year marriage was marred by childhood mortality—only two of their six children reached maturity—and in September 1782 Martha herself died at thirty-four. Only thirty-nine at the time, Jefferson survived his wife

Its couplets included these lines: "Before no mortal ever knew / A love like mine so tender, true…No joy unmixed my bosom warms / But when my angel's in my arms.

I don't see any harm myself in making a little money, provided that it can be done honestly and reasonably.