Quotes from Ron Chernow

It is remarkable how much we all could do if we avoid hustling, and go along at an even pace and keep from attempting too much.

When Lockhart and Warden hesitated, Rockefeller played his trump card: He invited Warden to come to Cleveland and inspect the Standard Oil books.

the power balance has tilted dramatically away from the bankers.

Never a great believer in book learning, Bill probably derided a college degree as a costly indulgence at a time when people didn't equate it with enhanced income.

Perhaps these daily rituals helped him to deal with underlying tensions that might otherwise have become ungovernable, for although he tried to project an air of unhurried calm, he was under terrific strain in creating his oil empire.

The hypercritical mother produced a son who was overly sensitive to criticism and suffered from a lifelong need for approval. One suspects that, in dealing with this querulous woman, George became an overly controlled personality and learned to master his temper and curb his tongue. It was the extreme self-control of a deeply emotional young man who feared the fatal vehemence of his own feelings, if left unchecked.

When he doubled the length of trains without expanding their crews, trainmen walked off the job in protest.

Hark! Hark! A voice from yonder sky / Methinks I hear my Saviour cry. . . . I come oh Lord, I mount, I fly / On rapid wings I cleave the sky.

Junior welcomed this firsthand exposure to urgent social problems.

On March 4, 1793, George Washington was sworn in for his second term as president

Fearful of being overshadowed by an expanding Republican slave empire in the west, some New England Federalists began to talk of secession from the union. Such plans formed part of the context for the Hamilton-Burr duel.

And he had inherited the chief American bank in London.

Pierpont always acknowledged his debt to his father—he never pretended to be self-made

some thought she should have received much less.

He fretted endlessly about his company and, below the surface, was constantly on edge.

agonized over the judicious application of his money and found it harder to exercise scrutiny over charities than over business.

Such repeated shocks must have stripped Alexander Hamilton of any sense that life was fair, that he existed in a benign universe, or that he could ever count on help from anyone. That this abominable childhood produced such a strong, productive, self-reliant human being—that this fatherless adolescent could have ended up a founding father of a country he had not yet even seen—seems little short of miraculous.

How had Hamilton justified this disgraceful action to himself? He believed that Jefferson's support for the Constitution had always been lukewarm and that, once in office, he would dismantle the federal government and return America to the chaos of the Articles of Confederation. This was not entirely paranoid thinking on Hamilton's part, for Jefferson made statements that sounded as if he wanted an annulment or radical recasting of the Constitution.

there will never be another bank as powerful, mysterious, or opulent as the old House of Morgan.

Even in death, Peabody managed to foster Anglo-American harmony.

I attribute it more than anything to the endorsement of my father's friends.

All the fortune that I have made has not served to compensate for the anxiety of that period.

The quieter he was, the more forceful his presence seemed

Each of his children had been matched to a black scholarship student whose education was paid for by the family