Quotes from Ron Chernow

This legal legerdemain again frustrated lawmakers who felt that the combine was so vast, slippery, and elusive that it could never be tamed or held accountable.

Having known many rich people, Gates was impressed that Rockefeller had no private yachts or railroad cars.

Having weathered thirty years of assaults in the courts and statehouses, he must have felt invulnerable.

Junior felt humble in his presence.

In retrospect, Congress, by denying a charter to the foundation, had forfeited a chance to restrict Rockefeller's influence over his money.

Never under any circumstances do an action which could be called in question if known to the world.

Even as he scared people away, he was a lonely man

Both refiners and railroads were struggling with excess capacity and suicidal price wars.

As the panic deepened, Rockefeller refused to release collateral despite Corrigan's pleas that he could use his lake vessels to raise additional money.

He avoided a gaudy residence and had no desire to impress other people.

It was the only time in American history a sitting president came under fire in combat.

If she is right we will not gain anything by answering, and if she is wrong time will vindicate us.

My experience at Chicago and with the newspaper people generally of late has been very satisfactory.

By September 1774, Sears retaliated with scathing letters to Rivington. "I believe you to be either an ignorant impudent pretender to what you do not understand," he wrote, "or a base servile tool, ready to do the dirty work of any knave who will purchase you.

He preferred to give to religious, cultural, and educational causes, not to social welfare agencies.

From Vanderbilt, Morgan had learned the trick of basing value not on current assets but on projected earnings.

Rockefeller knew that he now needed a larger and more efficient method for disposing of his fortune.

John D. Rockefeller was the Protestant work ethic in its purest form, leading a life so consistent with Weber's classic essay that it reads like his spiritual biography.

December 14, 1790, one day after he jolted Congress with his call for an excise tax on liquor, Alexander Hamilton submitted another trailblazing report, this one a clarion call to charter America's first central bank.

This was one of the few times in the century that

A parte habitada da cidade estendia-se da Battery até o Common.

I should say in general the advantage of education is to better fit a man for life's work.

If anything, he craved seclusion.

The photograph captured the man whole.