Quotes from Ron Chernow

Armed with this potent weapon, Rockefeller obtained such excellent railroad rates that it compensated for having to ship the crude oil to

If only Rockefeller had played fair, Emery insisted, he would have ended up the more powerful oilman.

Hamilton venerated the law, while Burr often seemed mildly bored and cynical about it. "The law is whatever is successfully argued and plausibly maintained," he stated.

It was vague in meaning and poorly enforced and so riddled with loopholes that it was popularly derided as the Swiss Cheese Act.

I did not feel I could afford such luxuries, and am grateful for a son who is able to buy them for me.

In a little more than two years, they had suffered their father's disappearance and their mother's death, reducing them to orphans and throwing them upon the mercy of friends, family, and community.

Eliza received sympathy from her neighbors, who felt she was being abused by her husband. Yet she remained loyal to him

In later years, when an acquaintance inquired what had pained him most in the course of his eventful life, Grant responded readily, To be deceived by a friend. p809

Was Lamont's reluctance simple candor—or splendid calculation?

he is coming into the office to see if he is fit to go into the firm later on, which I hope and trust he will be.

Parmalee and Senior had a remote relationship and seldom saw each other.

Barton even reassured reporters that it had been unsought.

businessmen respected them for their honest dealings.

seemed quite content to sit in silence sometimes and not try to entertain each other.

People were "governed more by passion and prejudice than by an enlightened sense of their interests

Early on, John and Laura must have spotted each other as kindred souls, especially when it came to religion.

His similarity to his father in thought and outlook is almost weird.

Rockefeller was never tempted to reconsider the issues raised by the Sherman Act.

With such men at the helm, the GEB, for all its good works, would fall considerably short of heaven.

begged the larger question of whether people should accept money gained by what they deemed unscrupulous means.

Hamilton and others had argued that the Constitution transcended state governments and directly expressed the will of the American people. Hence, the Constitution began "We the People of the United States" and was ratified by special conventions, not state legislatures.

He always possessed an unusual, self-protective capacity to suppress unpleasant memories and keep alive those things that fortified his resolve.

He "has so happy a faculty of appearing to accommodate and yet carrying his point, that if he was really not one of the best-intentioned men in the world, he might be a very dangerous one," observed Abigail Adams.

One possible reason for this contrition was that Frank was chronically in debt to his brother.