Top 280 Ron Chernow Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 2 of 6

51. “In the felicitous words of one early Burr biographer, “The Clintons had power, the Livingstons had numbers, and the Schuylers had Hamilton.”61.”

— Ron Chernow

52. “Every president “ought to be personally responsible for his behaviour in office.”

— Ron Chernow

53. “Success comes from keeping the ears open and the mouth closed” and “A man of words and not of deeds is like a garden full of weeds.”

— Ron Chernow

54. “If Jefferson provided the essential poetry of American political discourse, Hamilton established the prose of American statecraft.”

— Ron Chernow

55. “If Hamilton had shot first, he had wasted his fire, exactly as foretold. And if Burr had fired first, as Pendleton alleged, then Hamilton seems to have squeezed the trigger in a reflexive spasm of agony and shot involuntarily into the trees. In neither scenario did Hamilton aim his gun at Aaron Burr.”

— Ron Chernow

56. “Because Conway persisted in maligning Washington, he was summoned to the dueling ground by General John Cadwalader, who fired a ball through Conway’s mouth that came out the back of his head. Cadwalader showed no regret. “I have stopped the damned rascal’s lying tongue at any rate,” he observed as his opponent lay in agony on the ground.”

— Ron Chernow

57. “To those who feared oppressive taxes, Hamilton made an argument that anticipated “supply-side economics” of the late twentieth century, saying that officials “can have no temptation to abuse this power, because the motive of revenue will check its own extremes. Experience has shown that moderate duties are more productive than high ones.”10.”

— Ron Chernow

58. “Princeton applicants had to know Virgil, Cicero’s orations, and Latin grammar and also had to be ’so well acquainted with Greek as to render any part of the four Evangelists in that language into Latin or English.”

— Ron Chernow

59. “The world of politics was filled with duplicitous people and Grant was poorly equipped to spot them, remaining an easy victim for crooked men. “They studied Grant, some of them, as the shoemaker measures the foot of his customer,” wrote George Hoar.”

— Ron Chernow

60. “While other Americans dreamed of a brand-new society that would expunge all traces of effete European civilization, Hamilton humbly studied those societies for clues to the formation of a new government. Unlike Jefferson, Hamilton never saw the creation of America as a magical leap across a chasm to an entirely new landscape, and he always thought the New World had much to learn from the Old. Probably.”

— Ron Chernow

61. “For Hamilton, the Jay Treaty victory represented the culmination of his work with Washington. By settling all outstanding issues left over from the Revolution, the treaty removed the last impediments to improved relations with England and promised sustained prosperity.”

— Ron Chernow

62. “Johnson had unleashed the political equivalent of an act of war against Congress. Retaliating against the president’s violation of the Tenure of Office Act, the House introduced a resolution to impeach Andrew Johnson for high crimes and misdemeanors. Three days later, the resolution passed by an overwhelming 126 to 47.”

— Ron Chernow

63. “The president of a democracy, he averred, had to show himself to the people, and some danger was an inescapable hazard of office. “To be absolutely safe,” he told John Nicolay resignedly, “I should lock myself up in a box.”

— Ron Chernow

64. “The unflappable Washington then continued with the session as if nothing had happened. It was a classic performance: he exercised the greatest self-control when roiled by the most unruly emotions.”

— Ron Chernow

65. “Jay was attacked with peculiar venom. Near his New York home, the walls of a building were defaced with the gigantic words, ‘Damn John Jay. Damn everyone that won’t damn John Jay. Damn everyone that won’t put up lights in the windows and sit up all night damning John Jay.”

— Ron Chernow

66. “The securities laws of the 1930s were so important because it forced companies to file registration statements and issue prospectuses, and it remedied the imbalance of information.”

— Ron Chernow

67. “Since both Eliza and Angelica were pregnant, sister Peggy crept downstairs to retrieve the endangered child. The leader of the raiding party barred her way with a musket. “Wench, wench! Where is your master?” he demanded. “Gone to alarm the town,” the coolheaded Peggy said.24 The intruder, fearing that Schuyler would return with troops, fled in alarm.”

— Ron Chernow

68. “While other founding fathers were reared in tidy New England villages or cosseted on baronial Virginia estates, Hamilton grew up in a tropical hellhole of dissipated whites and fractious slaves, all framed by a backdrop of luxuriant natural beauty. On.”

— Ron Chernow

69. “The first great skeptic of American exceptionalism, he refused to believe that the country was exempt from the sober lessons of history.”

— Ron Chernow

70. “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

71. “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

72. “Hamilton, back by August 13, dove into a debate that passionately engaged him: immigration. He opposed any attempt to restrict membership in Congress to native-born Americans or to stipulate a residency period before immigrants could qualify for it.”

— Ron Chernow

73. “If those who ‘gain all they can’ and ‘save all they can,’ will likewise ‘give all they can,’ then the more they will grow in grace.”

— Ron Chernow

74. “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”49.”

— Ron Chernow

75. “The task of government was not to stop selfish striving – a hopeless task – but to harness it for the public good.”

— Ron Chernow

76. “Grant adopted unusual precautions, returning to the Willard Hotel twice daily for meals and staying indoors at night. When he set eyes on images of John Wilkes Booth, he immediately recognized the sinister horseman who had shadowed his path to the train station and knew that he himself had stood on the death list of intended victims.”

— Ron Chernow

77. “As a West Point graduate, Grant had enjoyed an insider’s knowledge of military personnel during the war, but as a Washington outsider, he needed the valuable advice of seasoned professionals about appointments.”

— Ron Chernow

78. “Credit is an entire thing. Every part of it has the nicest sympathy with every other part. Wound one limb and the whole tree shrinks and decays.”37.”

— Ron Chernow

79. “To see plants rise from the earth and flourish by the superior skill and bounty of the laborer fills a contemplative mind with ideas which are more easy to be conceived than expressed.”21.”

— Ron Chernow

80. “Sensing an abandonment of Reconstruction, Frederick Douglass wondered what good abolition had been for the black man if “having been freed from the slaveholder’s lash, he is to be subject to the slaveholder’s shotgun?”

— Ron Chernow

81. “Prejudice and private interest will be antagonists too powerful for public spirit and public good.”

— Ron Chernow

82. “When news of the crash came, probably a lot of people in small towns and farms across America felt a sense of grim satisfaction that the sinners had finally been punished for their wicked ways.”

— Ron Chernow

83. “In his essays on the need for executive-branch vigor, Hamilton continually invoked the king of England as an example of what should be avoided, especially the monarch’s lack of accountability. Every president “ought to be personally responsible for his behaviour in office.”

— Ron Chernow

84. “Simon Wolf wrote during Woodrow Wilson’s tenure, “President Grant did more on behalf of American citizens of Jewish faith at home and abroad than all the Presidents of the United States prior thereto or since.”

— Ron Chernow

85. “Noah Webster contended that Hamilton’s “ambition, pride, and overbearing temper” had destined him “to be the evil genius of this country.”

— Ron Chernow

86. “The outside world may have wondered about Grant’s sympathies, but his private statements leave no room for conjecture about his inexorable drift toward Radical Republicanism. Welles later speculated that by fall 1866, Grant “was secretly acting in concert with the Radicals to deceive and beguile the President.”80 Grant didn’t regard it as deception so much as adhering to bedrock principles, telling Badeau he had “never felt so anxious about the country.”

— Ron Chernow

87. “The young man who had worked so hard to ingratiate himself with his superiors in the British Army was suddenly breathing fire. Washington was always reluctant to sign on to any cause, because when he did so, his commitment was total.”

— Ron Chernow

88. “You don’t want too much fear in a market, because people will be blinded to some very good buying opportunities. You don’t want too much complacency because people will be blinded to some risk.”

— Ron Chernow

89. “On September 3, an especially hostile audience baited Johnson in Cleveland, where his behavior flirted with new lows. When a heckler yelled that Johnson should “hang Jeff Davis,” the president rejoined, “Why not hang Thad Stevens and Wendell Phillips?”62 When someone in the crowd hollered, “Is this dignified?” Johnson shot back: “I care not for dignity.”

— Ron Chernow

90. “A lot of the money in the stock market is really our national retirement plan, for better or worse.”

— Ron Chernow

91. “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

92. “Once Reconstruction collapsed, it left southern blacks for eighty years at the mercy of Jim Crow segregation, lynchings, poll taxes, literacy tests, and other tactics designed to segregate them from whites and deny them the vote.”

— Ron Chernow

93. “An essential difference between the American and French revolutions was that the American version allowed a search for many truths, while French zealots tried to impose a single sacred truth that allowed no deviation. ” page 714.”

— Ron Chernow

94. “He railed against the baleful precedent that would be set if the legislature exiled an entire category of people without hearings or trials. If that happened, “no man can be safe, nor know when he may be the innocent victim of a prevailing faction. The name of liberty applied to such a government would be a mockery of common sense.”

— Ron Chernow

95. “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

96. “Adams had spent most of his vice presidency exiled in the Senate, casting a record thirty-one tiebreaking votes. Of the number-two post, he said wearily but indelibly that it was “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.”

— Ron Chernow

97. “He also saw human nature as insatiably curious and reserved his highest praise for minds that created “schemes or systems of truth.”11.”

— Ron Chernow

98. “The financial turmoil on Wall Street and the William Duer debacle pointed up a glaring defect in Hamilton’s political theory: the rich could put their own interests above the national interest.”

— Ron Chernow

99. “Nevertheless, it frustrated him that after this exhaustive investigation his opponents still rehashed the stale charges of misconduct. He had learned a lesson about propaganda in politics and mused wearily that “no character, however upright, is a match for constantly reiterated attacks, however false.” If a charge was made often enough, people assumed in the end “that a person so often accused cannot be entirely innocent.” 34 Once.”

— Ron Chernow

100. “A lifelong Methodist, he had always viewed religious excess with a certain irony, having once told a clutch of ministers that America boasted three parties: Democrats, Republicans, and Methodists.”

— Ron Chernow