Quotes from Ron Chernow

His insecurities only worsened as he had more to lose.

Having been endowed with the gift I possess, I believe it is my duty to make money and still more money, and to use the money I make for the good of my fellow man according to the dictates of my conscience.

At one stroke, Jefferson heaped heartless abuse on a sick man and inverted reality. Not only did Hamilton have yellow fever, but he had shown outstanding valor during the Revolution while Jefferson, as Virginia governor, had cravenly fled into the woods before the advancing British troops.

While this resulted largely from his aversion to publicity, it also stemmed from his residing in Cleveland.

Chase was a tall, ungainly man with a resemblance to Dr. Samuel Johnson and a face so broad and ruddy that he was dubbed "Bacon Face.

For a time, they were held back by Benjamin Brewster, and Rockefeller, unwilling to move without a consensus, yielded against his better judgment.

Never deterred by restrictive laws, Flagler switched his legal residence to Florida and applied his influence with state legislators.

Having never dealt with Frank, Slaght naively trusted him.

Why distrust the evidence of the Jews? Discredit them and you destroy the Christian religion.

The northern states were not about to override their southern brethren on the slavery issue. All along, the American Revolution had been premised on a tacit bargain that regional conflicts would be subordinated to the need for unity among the states.

If we have done anything wrong," said Pierpont, "send your man to my man and they can fix it up.

One could now see in his face the subdued melancholy of a man who had sacrificed too much for work.

Frank must have feared that any published comments would dry up the loans from his brothers.

I feel, therefore, that large sums of money are, in a sense, safer there than in other fields.

Rockefeller now left Andrew Carnegie far behind and probably had at least twice as much money as Carnegie did.

With an unaccustomed rhetorical flourish, he affirmed that in the near future "the dividing line will not be Mason & Dixons but between patriotism, & intelligence on the one side & superstition, ambition & ignorance on the other.

The comment smacked of aristocratic disdain for the self-made man. In fact, no immigrant in American history has ever made a larger contribution than Alexander Hamilton.

Right before Adams left office, Congress had enacted the Judiciary Act, which created new courts and twenty-three new federal judgeships so as to spare Supreme Court justices the onerous task of riding the circuit.

During one ghastly period in 1779, the continental dollar shed half its value in three weeks.

Not "unless we find out . . . they have done something we regard as wrong

Recoiling at what he saw as the Clark brothers' pomposity, he eventually grew as censorious of them as he had been of George Gardner.

To complicate matters, new refiners now entered the business expressly to blackmail him into buying them out.

I am not a good one to judge such things: I am too soft-hearted.

Adams made baldly partisan selections for a judiciary already packed with Federalists. His appointment of the so-called midnight judges rubbed old Republican wounds.