Quotes from Ron Chernow

What Rockefeller had accomplished in oil a generation earlier was now being imitated in steel, copper, rubber, tobacco, leather, and other products

Rockefeller reiterated his faith that cooperation, not competition, advanced the general welfare.

No, I am not," Grant shot back, "but 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.

had a wide business acquaintance, but few associates knew him well.

I do think we are and shall be great consumers.

Where Bill had squandered his considerable talents, John had succeeded on a scale that made Bill look cheap and tawdry.

The colored race is not ready it seems to me for high culture.

There is no essential difference between religion and morality except that the one is more intense and passionate than the other.

I think that we Americans, at least in the Southern col[onie]s, cannot contend with a good grace for liberty until we shall have enfranchised our slaves

By 1859, when he was twenty, his charitable giving surpassed the 10 percent mark.

he didn't feel threatened by talented men of his own age

He was always proud of the fact that he had an abnormally low pulse of fifty-two.

Always on good terms with Rockefeller, Twain thought he deserved a fair hearing from the press and was sure he would make a good impression on the publishers.

if they refrained from rate-cutting and cutthroat competition, the financiers would stop underwriting competing railways.

Washington instinctively trod the fine line between showiness and austerity, defining a characteristic style of understated elegance.

Despite his lack of legal training, Henry M. Flagler drew up the act of incorporation.

By this point, the search for Doc Rockefeller had developed into a national obsession.

Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. (Thomas Jefferson)

Decisions were reached by consensus.

the leading men would receive no salary but would profit solely from the appreciation of their shares and rising dividends—which Rockefeller thought a more potent stimulus to work.

Our friends do feel that we have not received fair treatment from the Republican Party, but we expect better things in the future.

Such outings were rare during Hamilton's harried first days in office. He had to create a customs service on the spot

Rockefeller and Gates allowed beneficiaries to announce the receipt of gifts.

I never met a man who had such a love of money.