Quotes from Ron Chernow

Rockefeller trained himself to reveal as little as possible, even in private letters, which he wrote as if they might someday fall into the hands of a prosecuting attorney.

Since railroads were natural monopolies and couldn't survive much direct competition, they could be easily threatened by small competitors

but Rockefeller was the sort of stubborn person who only grew more determined with rejection.

Grant proved remarkably fair-minded, declaring that "should there be any grounds of suspicion of fraudulent counting on either side it should be reported and denounced at once . . . Either party can afford to be disappointed in the result but the Country cannot afford to have the result tainted by the suspicion of illegal or false returns.

He doesn't act on analysis.

He never told us what to do or not to do.

Practically not a barrel of oil could get to a railroad without [Rockefeller's] consent.

Whatever his own discomfort, Rockefeller made an excellent impression.

As philosopher Herbert Spencer once said, "A business partnership, balanced as the authorities of its members may theoretically be, presently becomes a union in which the authority of one partner is tacitly recognized as greater than that of the other or others."16

almost reeling with shock.

6 He also saw his father's vanity, noting how after one good deed he was "simply too pleased with himself.

The next incendiary issue was that some debt was owed by the thirteen states, some by the federal government. Hamilton decided to consolidate all the debt into a single form: federal debt.

Rockefeller was enormously gratified and touched by the warm, spontaneous enthusiasm of the students.

its dividend was halved.

Some invisible force was working against them.

Extremely punctual for all appointments, he said, "A man has no right to occupy another man's time unnecessarily.

Aware of the rich children spoiled by their parents, Senior seized every opportunity to teach his son the value of money.

As a philanthropist, Rockefeller chose to cultivate a wise detachment from his creations and told Harper that he saw himself as a silent partner in the operation

He is very well and jolly by bits but sometimes I see he feels as lonely as I do

I'm doing this in love.

Your speech at the First Presbyterian Church has caused me a great deal of annoyance.

In writing an intemperate indictment of John Adams, Hamilton committed a form of political suicide that blighted the rest of his career. As shown with "The Reynolds Pamphlet," he had a genius for the self-inflicted wound and was capable of marching blindly off a cliff—traits most pronounced in the late 1790s. Gouverneur Morris once commented that one of Hamilton's chief characteristics was "the pertinacious adherence to opinions he had once formed.

From an engineering standpoint, Pierpont knew little about railroads.

She typically erred on the side of severity.