Quotes About Influence

By the time of "A Full Vindication," Hamilton had clearly assumed the coloring of his environment.

John Adams said that if Washington "was not the greatest president, he was the best actor of the presidency we have ever had.

So why did Rockefeller stick to his self-defeating silence?

Gates met with Harper and urged him to shed his outside activities.

To some extent, Rockefeller sent out conflicting messages and was partly to blame for Harper's profligacy.

Ida Alice seemed determined to run through Flagler's money, gathering an expensive wardrobe and trying to buy her way into New York high society.

But the moves reflected a new wish to shape opinion

Nevertheless, the general public came away with the impression that John D. was pulling the strings.

Hamilton wanted the votes of individual members recorded. Instead, the convention chose to proceed on a one-state, one-vote basis, which meant that Hamilton's vote would likely be nullified by his two fellow delegates.

For many years, the Rothschilds, the Nobels, and Standard Oil circled around each other, each trying to forge links with a second party to isolate the third.

John D. Rockefeller had an unfailing knack for knowing who would help or hinder him in his career, an instinct only sharpened by time.

Bribing Frank's secretary with candy and theater tickets, Slaght gained access to Frank, who was no less protective of his father than John was.

a Morgan partner received a guarantee of riches and a seat on the high council of American finance.

For a time, they were held back by Benjamin Brewster, and Rockefeller, unwilling to move without a consensus, yielded against his better judgment.

Never deterred by restrictive laws, Flagler switched his legal residence to Florida and applied his influence with state legislators.

Lawrence would function as both a peer and a parental figure for his half brother, and his youthful adventures operated so powerfully on George's imagination that the latter's early life seems to enact a script first drafted by his older brother.

While keeping apart from the management of the RIMR and the GEB, Rockefeller remained more involved with the University of Chicago.

Junior decided to look elsewhere and finally selected Brown because three close friends had chosen to attend it.

If there had been as prompt and energetic action on the part of the Russian oil industry as was taken by the Standard Oil Company, the Russians would have dominated many of the world's markets

42 The government was obviously withdrawing its support.

With granite will, he began to mold Pierpont, instructing him to associate with those of his grammar-school classmates "as are of the right stamp & whose influence over you will be good.

I was often there with George, his playmate, schoolmate, and young man's companion," said Lawrence Washington of Chotank, a distant relative. "Of the mother I was more afraid than of my own parents; she awed me in the midst of her kindness, for she was, indeed, truly kind.

After Pierpont Morgan's death, the House of Morgan would become less autocratic, less identified with a single individual. Power would be diffused among several partners, although Jack Morgan would remain as figurehead.

For Hamilton, Jefferson's desire to overturn the Judiciary Act was an insidious first step toward destroying the Constitution: "Who is so blind as not to see that the right of the legislature to abolish the judges at pleasure destroys the independence of the judicial department and swallows it up in the impetuous vortex of legislative influence?"34 Without an independent judiciary, the Constitution was a worthless document.