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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 6947a75 | In one glowing passage, Hamilton invoked the colonists' natural rights: "The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature by the hand of the divinity itself and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power." | Ron Chernow | ||
| 8f3791d | a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidding appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. | Ron Chernow | ||
| ccf2dae | The ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee," he once said, "and I pay more for that ability than for any other under the sun." -- | Ron Chernow | ||
| d995ef3 | As to why God had singled out John D. Rockefeller for such spectacular bounty, Rockefeller always adverted to his own adherence to the doctrine of stewardship--the notion of the wealthy man as a mere instrument of God, a temporary trustee of his money, who devoted it to good causes. "It has seemed as if I was favored and got increase because the Lord knew that I was going to turn around and give it back."73" | Ron Chernow | ||
| 0ebb53f | A journalist named C. E. Meade, a nephew of George Gordon Meade, claimed Grant puffed on his last cigar while visiting a horse farm in Goshen, New York. "Gentlemen," Grant announced to his companions, "this is the last cigar I shall ever smoke." | Ron Chernow | ||
| ef401d7 | in the end he required political pull to do so. After years of wandering, Grant had popped up in the right congressional district in the right state. Lincoln had the power to appoint brigadier generals of volunteers, and the Illinois caucus enjoyed such sway that six Illinois brigadiers were selected, two more than any other state. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 33a7c32 | shall pass through this world but once. Any good thing therefore that I can do, any kindness I can show to any human being, let me do it now; let me not defer it nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again. | Ron Chernow | ||
| a3c3038 | It is easy to snicker at such deceit and conclude that Hamilton faked all emotion for his wife, but this would belie the otherwise exemplary nature of their marriage. Eliza Hamilton never expressed anything less than a worshipful attitude toward her husband. His love for her, in turn, was deep and constant if highly imperfect. The problem was that no single woman could seem to satisfy all the needs of this complex man with his checkered chi.. | Ron Chernow | ||
| a8bfa17 | He wondered why he cared so desperately about the fate of his adopted country and others seemingly so little. "To see the character of the government and the country so sported with, exposed to so indelible a blot, puts my heart to the torture. Am I then more of an American than those who drew their first breath on American ground? Or what is it that thus torments me at a circumstance so calmly viewed by almost everybody else? Am I a fool, .. | government idealism patriotism politics | Ron Chernow | |
| 35501bc | Whoever considers the nature of our government with discernment will see that though obstacles and delays will frequently stand in the way of the adoption of good measures, yet when once adopted, they are likely to be stable and permanent. It will be far more difficult to undo than to do." 93" | Ron Chernow | ||
| 7c96a80 | Thus, Hamilton triumphed posthumously over Burr, converting the latter's victory at Weehawken into his political coup de grace. Burr's reputation perished along with Hamilton, exactly as Hamilton had anticipated. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 00007e0 | Over a period of nearly six months, he published twenty-eight glittering essays, strengthening his claim as arguably the foremost political pamphleteer in American history. As with The Federalist Papers, "The Defence" spilled out at a torrid pace, sometimes two or three essays per week. In all, Hamilton poured forth nearly one hundred thousand words even as he kept up a full-time legal practice. This compilation, dashed off in the heat of c.. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 942f9f3 | If a charge was made often enough, people assumed in the end "that a person so often accused cannot be entirely innocent." | Ron Chernow | ||
| d19d53d | The three terms of Federalist rule had been full of dazzling accomplishments that Republicans, with their extreme apprehension of federal power, could never have achieved. Under the tutelage of Washington, Adams, and Hamilton, the Federalists had bequeathed to American history a sound federal government with a central bank, a funded debt, a high credit rating, a tax system, a customs service, a coast guard, a navy, and many other institutio.. | Ron Chernow | ||
| f18da24 | Washington's decision to forgo a third term was momentous. He wasn't bound by term limits, and many Americans expected him to serve for life. He surrendered power in a world where leaders had always grabbed for more. Stepping down was the most majestic democratic response he could have flung at his Republican critics. Toward the end of his first term, he had asked James Madison to draft a farewell address and then stashed it away when he de.. | Ron Chernow | ||
| eb857e3 | Where Jefferson dismissed these wholesale killings as regrettable but necessary sacrifices to freedom, Hamilton was traumatized by them. The burgeoning atheism of the French Revolution reawakened in him religious feelings that had lain dormant since King's College days. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 4852553 | McDougall was a certified revolutionary hero, while the Scottish-born cashier, the punctilious and corpulent William Seton, was a Loyalist who had spent the war in the city. In a striking show of bipartisan unity, the most vociferous Sons of Liberty--Marinus Willett, Isaac Sears, and John Lamb--appended their names to the bank's petition for a state charter. As a triple power at the new bank--a director, the author of its constitution, and .. | Ron Chernow | ||
| c6513ae | Washington's hair was reddish brown, and contrary to a common belief, he never wore a wig. The illusion that he did so derived from the powder that he sprinkled on his hair with a puffball in later life. | Ron Chernow | ||
| ad3d83b | The mystery of why Callender and his cronies disclosed the Reynolds scandal that summer is a tantalizing one. Callender mentioned the recall of James Monroe, but there were other reasons as well. The infamous expose might never have been published if Washington had still been in office. For Republican pamphleteers, it was now open season on the Federalists. Callender wanted to prevent Hamilton from exercising the same influence over Adams t.. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 002b358 | Noah Webster contended that Hamilton's "ambition, pride, and overbearing temper" had destined him "to be the evil genius of this country." | Ron Chernow | ||
| 513d317 | Robert Troup said that Hamilton rejected fees if they were larger than he thought warranted and generally favored arbitration or amicable settlements in lieu of lawsuits. | Ron Chernow | ||
| a596615 | In times of such commotion as the present, while the passions of men are worked up to an uncommon pitch, there is great danger of fatal extremes. The same state of the passions which fits the multitude, who have not a sufficient stock of reason and knowledge to guide them, for opposition to tyranny and oppression, very naturally leads them to a contempt and disregard of all authority. The due medium is hardly to be found among the more inte.. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 290b619 | Errors once discovered are more than half amended, | Ron Chernow | ||
| 95d2442 | Nothing alarmed the white South more than black power at the polls, which was why most terror was directed there. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 40f74aa | For this boy destined to be the world's greatest heir, money was so omnipresent as to be invisible--something "there, like air or food or any other element," he later said--yet it was never easily attainable.11 As if he were a poor, rural boy, he earned pocket change by mending vases and broken fountain pens or by sharpening pencils. Aware of the rich children spoiled by their parents, Senior seized every opportunity to teach his son the va.. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 8ee80a7 | have also learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions and not upon our circumstances. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 19b179c | His subordinates remembered him as tough but fair-minded. Years later, one of them retained Hamilton as a lawyer, even though he had become a vocal political enemy. When Hamilton questioned the wisdom of this, the ex-soldier replied, "I served in your company during the war and I know you will do me justice in spite of my rudeness." | Ron Chernow | ||
| e469c4b | Rockefeller was sensitive about adults who behaved in a high-handed fashion toward him. Having assumed so much responsibility at home, he now thought of himself as a mature person. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 924d04a | His eloquence . . . seemed to require opposition to give it its full force. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 9f0d9f5 | In December 1790, with other options foreclosed, Hamilton revived a proposal he had floated in his Report on Public Credit: an excise tax on whiskey and other domestic spirits. He knew the measure would be loathed in rural areas that thrived on moonshine, but he thought this might be more palatable to farmers than a land tax. Hamilton confessed to Washington an ulterior political motive for this liquor tax: he wanted to lay "hold of so valu.. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 2dce165 | On July 11, Lincoln appeared at Fort Stevens, north of Washington, which was under fire from Early's men. To soothe an alarmed populace, Lincoln and Stanton rode there in an open carriage. The tall, angular president, peeping over the fort's parapet, made a prime target for Confederate marksmen, and one Union soldier (possibly Captain Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.), unaware it was Lincoln, shouted, "Get down, you fool."13 It was the only time i.. | Ron Chernow | ||
| e2df950 | avoid. A rump group of rebel soldiers formed a colony west of Vera Cruz called Carlota, which soon burgeoned into a community of five thousand people. Among southern generals flocking to sanctuary in Mexico were Jubal Early, Edmund Kirby Smith, Sterling Price, J. B. Magruder, and Joseph Shelby as well as governors of three southern states and members of the Confederate cabinet. With Maximilian's connivance, these refugees began to advertise.. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 25f7427 | This was a powerful argument for Washington, who had gone to Philadelphia feeling that the war would be incomplete without a new Constitution; now, he knew, the Constitution would be incomplete without an effective new government. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 2816261 | Nothing in all history," William Lloyd Garrison wrote, equaled "this wonderful, quiet, sudden transformation of four millions of human beings from . . . the auction-block to the ballot box."92 Grant termed it "the most important event that has occurred, since the nation came into life."93 George Boutwell, who had introduced the proposed amendment in the House, said Grant had thrown his immense prestige behind it and that "its ratification w.. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 86153cc | Both as a matter of temperament and policy, Washington was taciturn, once advising his adopted grandson, "It is best to be silent, for there is nothing more certain than that it is at all times more easy to make enemies than friends." | Ron Chernow | ||
| a5aff27 | Washington has suffered from comparisons with other founders, several of whom were renowned autodidacts, but by any ordinary standard, he was an exceedingly smart man with a quick ability to grasp | Ron Chernow | ||
| 3b7adbb | One story, perhaps apocryphal, claims that when Hamilton was asked why the framers omitted the word God from the Constitution, he replied, "We forgot." | Ron Chernow | ||
| 886f51e | It turned out that before he had stalked Garfield, Charles Guiteau had stalked Grant. | Ron Chernow | ||
| f9f8c10 | Everyone found Grant modest and retiring, an altogether likable fellow. "His only dissipation was in owning a fast horse," said a regimental colleague. "He always liked to have a fine nag, and he paid high prices to get one."21 Grant enjoyed playing chess and checkers, attending parties with Julia, and worshipping with her at the Methodist church." | Ron Chernow | ||
| 2eeac15 | Washington and other founders entertained the fanciful hope that America would be spared the bane of political parties, which they called "factions" and associated with parochial self-interest." | Ron Chernow | ||
| 96634c8 | 55 This thirty-five-page essay had been written in two or three weeks by Hamilton, as he entered the fray with all the grandiloquence and learning at his disposal. He showed himself proficient at elegant insults, an essential literary talent at the time, and possessing a precocious knowledge of history, philosophy, politics, economics, and law. In retrospect, it was clear that he had found his calling as a fearless, swashbuckling intellectu.. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 4daca97 | A princess," (Queen Sophia) would proclaim, "requires a graceful and willowy carriage, not the appetite of a swineherd." | Catherine Gilbert Murdock | ||
| 3b51923 | Rich old people are more attractive than poor old people, so by all means, try to get rich before age sets in. Otherwise, you'll just be playing catch-up for the rest of your life and that will just wear you out, let me tell you. | financial-planning humerous-quotes senior-citizen sweet-potato-queens | Jill Conner Browne | |
| 672b723 | How many times I have wondered what my fate might have been had I accompanied my parents that rainy spring morning. Such musings, I recognise, are more than a trifle insane, for envisioning what might have been had no more connection to our own true reality than a lunatic has to a lemon. | Catherine Gilbert Murdock |