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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| dfe9c7b | Hamilton knew the symbolic value of rapid decision making and phenomenal energy. As he wrote during the Revolution, "If a Government appears to be confident of its own powers, it is the surest way to inspire the same confidence in others."72 With support for the Constitution still tentative in some states, Hamilton knew that designing enemies lay in wait to destroy it. To succeed, the government had to establish its authority, and to this e.. | Ron Chernow | ||
| d5cdec5 | leitmotif | Ron Chernow | ||
| 357f391 | With only three executive departments, each secretary wielded considerable power. Moreover, departmental boundaries were not well defined, allowing each secretary to roam across a wide spectrum of issues. This was encouraged by Washington, who frequently requested opinions from his entire cabinet on an issue. It particularly galled Jefferson that Hamilton, with his keen appetite for power, poached so frequently on his turf. In fact, Hamilto.. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 85afdbe | George Clinton, his future political nemesis. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 3c36383 | d | Ron Chernow | ||
| af3f6d2 | At home, Rockefeller created a make-believe market economy, calling Cettie the "general manager" and requiring the children to keep careful account books.16They earned pocket money by performing chores and received two cents for killing flies, ten cents for sharpening pencils, five cents per hour for practicing their musical instruments, and a dollar for repairing vases. They were given two cents per day for abstaining from candy and a dime.. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 4355d0a | explaining that he did so "from a desire of testifying" | Ron Chernow | ||
| fa87978 | Cettie was equally vigilant. When the children clamored for bicycles, John suggested buying one for each child. "No," said Cettie, "we will buy just one for all of them." "But, my dear," John protested, "tricycles do not cost much." "That is true," she replied. "It is not the cost. But if they have just one they will learn to give up to one another."18 So the children shared a single bicycle. Amazingly enough, the four children probably gre.. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 09775da | the author refers to Washington as Hamilton's "immaculate daddy," -- | Ron Chernow | ||
| c456cd8 | Cadwallader Colden, the assistant attorney general, | Ron Chernow | ||
| 117796d | In March 1780, Congress tried to restore monetary order by issuing one new dollar in exchange for forty old ones, | Ron Chernow | ||
| b663b97 | Chase was a tall, ungainly man with a resemblance to Dr. Samuel Johnson and a face so broad and ruddy that he was dubbed "Bacon Face." | Ron Chernow | ||
| 6f31aed | In yet another political fracas, Coleman received a caning that left him paralyzed from the waist down. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 46cc176 | Hamilton always expressed himself frankly, no matter what the consequences. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 6e151d3 | Hamilton's life was so tumultuous that only an audacious novelist could have dreamed it up. He embodied an enduring archetype: the obscure immigrant who comes to America, re-creates himself, and succeeds despite a lack of proper birth and breeding. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 344a6f3 | One lady remembered seeing them together that summer "turn and laugh and play with a monkey that was climbing in a neighbor's yard." | Ron Chernow | ||
| 1f0e9ac | Unable to curtail his free-handed spending and with his crops faring poorly, he started out 1786 with a paltry eighty-six pounds in cash. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 08856a5 | I do think we are and shall be great consumers. | Ron Chernow | ||
| c5830e9 | General John Cadwalader, who fired a ball through Conway's mouth that came out the back of his head. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 7f53349 | Hamilton dreaded parties as "the most fatal disease" of popular governments and hoped America could dispense with such groups.7 James Kent later wrote, "Hamilton said in The Federalist, in his speeches, and a hundred times to me that factions would ruin us and our government had not sufficient energy and balance to resist the propensity to them and to control their tyranny and their profligacy."8" | Ron Chernow | ||
| 061047b | Hamilton opposed the vogue for state banks that proliferated in the 1790s, less from narrow political motives than from a fear that competition among banks would dilute credit standards and invite imprudent lending practices as bankers vied for clients. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 135ad78 | He applauded a belated decision to evacuate Garfield from the White House in early September and bring him by train to Long Branch. "During the months of August and September the White House is one of the most unhealthy places in the world," Grant told the press. "He should have been taken from there long ago."20" -- | Ron Chernow | ||
| a432660 | April 1776, Benjamin Franklin expressed pleasure "with the ease and affability with which we were treated and the lively behaviour of the young ladies." 9" | Ron Chernow | ||
| 1c897ad | Their strategy was to make clients feel accepted into a private club, as if a Morgan account were a membership card to the aristocracy. | Ron Chernow | ||
| adc9391 | Other reasons account for Hamilton's failure to snatch the prize. Though blessed with a great executive mind and a consummate policy maker, Hamilton could never master the smooth restraint of a mature politician. His conception of leadership was noble but limiting: the true statesman defied the wishes of the people, if necessary, and shook them from wishful thinking and complacency. Hamilton lived in a world of moral absolutes and was not e.. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 3e02881 | In general, however, their two voices blended admirably together. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 60cee8d | The changes in the human condition are uncertain and frequent. Many, on whom fortune has bestowed her favours, may trace their family to a more unprosperous station; and many who are now in obscurity, may look back upon the affluence and exalted rank of their ancestors. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 6bd2649 | To understand Hamiliton's productivity, it is important to note that virtually all of his important work was journalism, prompted by topical issues and written in the midst of controversy. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 9fb32bd | From the First Philippic of Demosthenes, he plucked a passage that summed up his conception of a leader as someone who would not pander to popular whims. "As a general marches at the head of his troops," so should wise politicians "march at the head of affairs, insomuch that they ought not to wait the event to know what measures to take, but the measures which they have taken ought to produce the event." | Ron Chernow | ||
| 682f1c5 | The day after the Manhattan Company inaugurated business on Wall Street, two of its directors, Aaron Burr and John Barker Church, celebrated the event in idiosyncratic fashion: with a duel. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 2ef34bc | McKean of Pennsylvania swore | Ron Chernow | ||
| 0d4ab06 | In time, the government redefined the rules of the capitalist game to tame trusts and preserve competition, but as John D. Rockefeller set about building his fortune, the absence of clear-cut rules probably aided, at first, the creative vigor of the new industrial economy. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 8efae32 | Throughout his life, Rockefeller was wounded deeply by accusations that he was a cold, malignant personality. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 1a82a8d | Has anyone given you the law of these offices? No? It is this: nobody does anything if he can get anybody else to do it.... As soon as you can, get some one whom you can rely on, train him in the work, sit down, cock up your heels, and think out some way for the Standard Oil to make some money."25" | Ron Chernow | ||
| 2332e25 | His victory over the Cleveland refiners would be the first but also the most controversial campaign of his career. | Ron Chernow | ||
| ba3a1a3 | As a team, they were unbeatable and far more than the sum of their parts. | Ron Chernow | ||
| b221792 | In fact, Washington wasn't nonchalant and could be exacting and quick to take offense. | Ron Chernow | ||
| ff494b6 | The self-control was something achieved, not inherited, and often masked combustible emotions that could explode in fury. | Ron Chernow | ||
| d59c8a0 | Morristown, | Ron Chernow | ||
| 367fa00 | Let us pause briefly to tally the grim catalog of disasters that had befallen these two boys between 1765 and 1769: their father had vanished, their mother had died, their cousin and supposed protector had committed bloody suicide, and their aunt, uncle, and grandmother had all died. James, sixteen, and Alexander, fourteen, were now left alone, largely friendless and penniless. At | Ron Chernow | ||
| 164a5c2 | too | Ron Chernow | ||
| 6af84d5 | Hamilton's crowded years as treasury secretary scarcely exhaust the epic story of his short life, which was stuffed with high drama. From his illegitimate birth on Nevis to his bloody downfall in Weehawken, Hamilton's life was so tumultuous that only an audacious novelist could have dreamed it up. He embodied an enduring archetype: the obscure immigrant who comes to America, re-creates himself, and succeeds despite a lack of proper birth an.. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 60ffb97 | He made a cryptic statement to Hewitt that entered into Rockefeller folklore: "I have ways of making money you know nothing about." | Ron Chernow | ||
| 43e6993 | politics. A prominent antifederalist had already warned him that "rather than to adopt the Constitution, I would risk a government of Jew, Turk or infidel."83" | Ron Chernow |