Quotes from Ron Chernow

He also wanted Gates to make on-site inspections of schools and not rely on secondhand reports.

He was receiving about $3 million yearly in Standard Oil dividends (more than $50 million in 1996 dollars) and redirecting that into a vast portfolio of outside investments that made him a one-man holding company.

Nobody ever accused Gates of thinking small.

He did not deviate from this routine by one jot, regardless of the weather.

He added the important caveat that the war had been "a fearful lesson, and should teach us the necessity of avoiding wars in the future.

The Continental Army was a national institution and helped to make Hamilton the optimal person to articulate a vision of American nationalism, his vision sharpened by the immigrant's special love for his new country.

There was nothing about him to make anybody pay especial attention to him or speculate about his future.

I pressed him no further, and never found out where his father lived.

In their mutual desire for a professional army and a strong central authority that would mitigate local rivalries, the two men felt the first stirrings of an impulse that would someday culminate in the Constitution and the Federalist party. Like Washington, Hamilton was scandalized by the dissension and cowardice, the backstabbing and avarice, of the politicians in Philadelphia while soldiers were dying in the field.

By remaining silent in the face of criticism, he thought he would seem confident and secure in his integrity—in fact, he seemed guilty and arrogantly evasive.

Another boy might have been crestfallen, but Rockefeller was the sort of stubborn person who only grew more determined with rejection.

There are some people whom the Lord Almighty cannot save," he later said wearily of the Oil Creek refiners. "They don't want to be saved. They want to go on and serve the devil and keep on in their wicked ways.

It means disaster to the country, financial depression, and chaos.

Falam muito alto, rapidíssimo e todos ao mesmo tempo", queixou-se Adams. "Se fizerem uma pergunta, antes que seu interlocutor possa pronunciar três palavras em resposta, voltam à falação e sem previsão para acabar."25 A

By 1907, however, they had exploited enough legal loopholes to become highly speculative.

he only hoped his son would help as many people in his lifetime as Pierpont had in his.

The Hepburn report, however, was both belated and insufficient in hobbling Rockefeller's triumphant march, for by this time he had parlayed his secret railroad contracts into preeminence in oil. More important, his firm had now advanced far beyond the railroads to more efficient pipelines.

Rockefeller embarked on a buying binge such as the industry had never seen.

With $24 million now invested outside the oil and gas business, he held sizable stakes in 16 railroad companies, 9 real-estate firms, 6 steel companies, 6 steamship companies, 9 banks and financial houses, and even 2 orange groves.

Let him take his time, with gentle management. Make him feel that he is giving it, not that it is being taken from him with violence.

Though he was exacting and did not pay high salaries, he never yelled at his employees and dealt with them in a patient, considerate manner, occasionally inviting them to sit by the fire for a chat.

Hamilton lent his opinion the erudition of a treatise and the warmth of a manifesto. The essence of it was that government must possess the means to attain ends for which it was established or the bonds of society would dissolve. To liberate the government from a restrictive reading of the Constitution, Hamilton refined the doctrine of "implied powers"—that is, that the government had the right to employ all means necessary to carry out powers mentioned in the Constitution.

If education depended upon healthy tax rolls, then they would lift the entire tax base of the South.

Rockefeller refused to alter his seasonal house rotation, even though Cettie could no longer follow him.