Quotes from Ron Chernow

No detail of design escaped John and Abby's exacting attention.

Pierpont not only reorganized roads but locked up their future financing.

he listened closely to what people said and filed away as much information as he could, repeating valuable information to himself until it was memorized.

Rejecting a simple grid for the capital as tiresome and insipid, he argued that such a pattern made sense only for flat cities. Not only would diagonal streets provide contrast and variety, but they would serve as express lanes, shortening the distance between places. Town squares would be situated where diagonal avenues crossed.

It was Rockefeller, after all, who urged Harper to pay top dollar for America's best academic minds.

She makes her picture clear and attractive, no matter how unjust she is.

They fussed over every item with that small flutter of anxiety that Junior always felt when performing a task for his father.

The banker was strong because the railroads were weak, and however much Pierpont deplored railroad instability, he thrived on such chaos.

Ida Alice seemed determined to run through Flagler's money, gathering an expensive wardrobe and trying to buy her way into New York high society.

I can bear to hear of imputed or real errors. The man who wishes to stand well in the opinion of others must do this, because he is thereby enabled to correct his faults or remove the prejudices which are imbibed against him.

The road leading to the Constitutional Convention was a long, circuitous one. It began at Mount Vernon in 1785 when commissioners from Maryland and Virginia resolved a heated dispute over navigation of the Potomac River.

Os sofismas do fazendeiro seriam "desmascarados; suas objeções, refutadas; seus artifícios, detectados; e suas galhofas, ridicularizadas".

But the moves reflected a new wish to shape opinion

In a footnote, Lawson further conceded that Rockefeller never put a dime into the Amalgamated flotation.

Nevertheless, the general public came away with the impression that John D. was pulling the strings.

Yet he was more vulnerable to criticism than he admitted.

He believed there was a time to think and then a time to act. He brooded over problems and quietly matured plans over extended periods. Once he had made up his mind, however, he was no longer troubled by doubts and pursued his vision with undeviating faith. Unfortunately, once in that state of mind, he was all but deaf to criticism. He was like a projectile that, once launched, could never be stopped, never recalled, never diverted.

As to the love of liberty and country, you have given no stronger proofs of being actuated by it than I have done. Cease then to arrogate to yourself and to your party all the patriotism and virtue of the country."70

Pierpont selected partners not by wealth or to fortify the bank's capital but based on brains and talent.

Thomas Jones, a Loyalist judge in New York, wrote that not "a stick of wood, a spear of grass or a kernel of corn could the troops in New Jersey procure without fighting for it.

in war anything is better than indecision. We must decide. If I am wrong we shall soon find it out, and can do the other thing. But not to decide wastes both time and money and may ruin everything.

Regulation did not inevitably harm business but could also aid it.

May 1780, he had fresh cause to meditate on the failings of Congress when news came of a calamitous defeat: the British had taken Charleston, capturing an American garrison of 5,400 soldiers, including John Laurens. The year 1780 was to be a dismal one for the patriots.

The intimacy of this group of nationalists allowed the talks to range far beyond commercial disputes to a richer, more trenchant critique of the crumbling Articles of Confederation.