Top 280 Ron Chernow Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “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

152. “Hamilton saw America’s essential nature being forged in the throes of battle, and that made honest action imperative.”

— Ron Chernow

153. “The feckless President Buchanan, who opposed secession, thought the federal government powerless to stop it, and in his last annual message blamed the “incessant and violent agitation of the slavery question throughout the North for the past quarter of a century.”

— Ron Chernow

154. “In February 1866, he testified before Congress to oppose suffrage for former slaves: “My own opinion is that, at this time, they cannot vote intelligently, and that giving them the right of suffrage would open the door to a great deal of demagoguism, and lead to embarrassments in various ways.”

— Ron Chernow

155. “The extraordinary outpouring of bipartisan concern blotted out the scandals of Grant’s presidency and restored him to his rightful niche in the American pantheon. Hundreds of sympathetic messages piled up at the Grant residence, including telegrams from Jefferson Davis and the sons of Robert E. Lee and Albert Sidney Johnston.”

— Ron Chernow

156. “Rawlins was soon sidetracked from the war effort, however, by word from his wife, Emily, staying with her family in Goshen, New York, that she suffered from consumption; Rawlins would shortly leave to join her.”

— Ron Chernow

157. “Paranoid thinking seems to be a legacy of all revolutions, with purists searching for signs of heresy, and the American experience was no exception.”

— Ron Chernow

158. “As often is the case with addictions, the fanciful notion of a gradual discontinuance only provided a comforting pretext for more sustained indulgence.”

— Ron Chernow

159. “While Grant was celebrated as a victorious wartime general and the president who had peacefully settled the Alabama claims, most gratifying to him was being honored as the protector of freed people. A delegation of painters marched by, hoisting a picture that depicted the shackles of slavery being struck off beside the words “Welcome to the Liberator.”

— Ron Chernow

160. “He generally spoke with much animation and energy, and with considerable gesture. His mind was filled with all the learning and precedence required for the occasion, enabling him to make numerous extemporaneous speeches. He seduced the listeners with hope and provoked them with fear, leading one spectator to comment that “Hamilton’s harangues combine the poignancy of vinegar with the smoothness of oil.”

— Ron Chernow

161. “The first “Publius” letter pointed out that greed can corrupt a state and that a public official who betrays his trust “ought to feel the utmost rigor of public resentment and be detested as a traitor of the worst and most dangerous kind.”

— Ron Chernow

162. “The mutual fund industry and small investors are very relentless and very unforgiving if people don’t perform.”

— Ron Chernow

163. “They profess to aim only at a reform of the constitution and of certain abuses in the public administration, but an abolition of debts public and private and a new division of property are strongly suspected in contemplation.”

— Ron Chernow

164. “As a member of the style committee, Hamilton showed that, for all his misgivings about the Constitution, he could be cooperative and play a serviceable part. The convention showed good judgment in choosing him, given his literary gifts and rapid pen. It is hard to believe that the Committee of Style and Arrangement took only four days to burnish syllables that were to be painstakingly explicated by future generations.”

— Ron Chernow

165. “If the party elected Burr, it would be exposed “to the disgrace of a defeat in an attempt to elevate to the first place in the government one of the worst men in the community.”14 Hamilton had never spoken about Adams and Jefferson in these terms. “The appointment of Burr as president would disgrace our country abroad,” he informed Sedgwick. “No agreement with him could be relied upon.”15.”

— Ron Chernow

166. “When he sent a defiant annual message to Congress in early December, it polarized the situation even further. He accused Congress of burdening southern states with black voting rights even though blacks had demonstrated little capacity for government and “wherever they have been left to their own devices they have shown a constant tendency to relapse into barbarism.”27 This message claimed the dubious distinction of being the most racist such message ever penned by an American president.”

— Ron Chernow

167. “The prolific Hamilton was now writing pseudonymous commentaries on his own pseudonymous essays.”

— Ron Chernow

168. “Hamilton had one of those extraordinary 18th-century minds that touched on virtually every major topic of the day.”

— Ron Chernow

169. “One of the special characteristics of New York is that it is different from a London or a Paris because it’s the financial capital, and the cultural capital, but not the political capital.”

— Ron Chernow

170. “The rancor ushered in a golden age of literary assassination in American politics. No.”

— Ron Chernow

171. “The founding fathers were not only brilliant, they were system builders and systematic thinkers. They came up with comprehensive plans and visions.”

— Ron Chernow

172. “George Washington noted the hypocrisy of the many slaveholding antifederalists: “It is a little strange that the men of large property in the South should be more afraid that the Constitution will produce an aristocracy or a monarchy than the genuine, democratical people of the East.”

— Ron Chernow

173. “In the 1970s we saw a massive shift of household savings from the banks to the brokerage firms.”

— Ron Chernow

174. “If a charge was made often enough, people assumed in the end “that a person so often accused cannot be entirely innocent.”

— Ron Chernow

175. “The American Revolution was to succeed because it was undertaken by skeptical men who knew that the same passions that toppled tyrannies could be applied to destructive ends. In a moment of acute anxiety a year earlier, John Adams had wondered what would happen if “the multitude, the vulgar, the herd, the rabble” maintained such open defiance of authority. 13.”

— Ron Chernow

176. “He immediately had Rawlins summon stretcher bearers, but was dismayed when they removed the Union officer and overlooked the Confederate private. “Take this Confederate, too,” he said. “Take them both together; the war is over between them.”25 Grant seemed sickened by the carnage. “Let’s get away from this dreadful place,” he told an officer. “I suppose this work is part of the devil that is left in us all.”

— Ron Chernow

177. “Public infamy must restrain what the laws cannot.”

— Ron Chernow

178. “How this seemingly dull, phlegmatic man, in a stupendous act of nation building, presided over the victorious Continental Army and forged the office of the presidency is a mystery to most Americans. Something essential about Washington has been lost to posterity, making him seem a worthy but plodding man who somehow stumbled into greatness.”

— Ron Chernow

179. “America, he argued, did not need to triumph decisively over the heavily taxed British: a war of attrition that eroded British credit would nicely do the trick. All the patriots had to do was plant doubts among Britain’s creditors about the war’s outcome.”

— Ron Chernow

180. “On September 20, the New York Stock Exchange halted trading for ten days. Grant received emergency pleas for purchases of Treasury bonds to add liquidity to national banks, while Thomas Murphy, the former New York customs collector, wired: “Relief must come immediately or hundreds if not thousands of our best men will be ruined.”2 Not since 1837 had such a spasm of fear flashed through Wall Street.”

— Ron Chernow

181. “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

182. “Many observers were disturbed by all the uniformed men striding the White House corridors. In a broad-brush indictment, Charles Sumner disapproved of the way the White House “assumed the character of military head-quarters. To the dishonor of the civil service and in total disregard of precedent, the President surrounded himself with officers of the army, and substituted military forms for those of civil life.”

— Ron Chernow

183. “The United States still had not escaped economic dependence on England, which consumed nearly half of American exports and accounted for three-quarters of American imports.”

— Ron Chernow

184. “In discussing this Romanian bloodletting with Simon Wolf, Grant declared that “respect for human rights” was the “first duty” of any head of state and that blacks and Jews should be elevated to a rank of “equality with the most enlightened.” Grant showed surprising passion on the subject, saying “the story of the sufferings of the Hebrews of Roumania profoundly touches every sensibility of our nature.”

— Ron Chernow

185. “Henceforth he would project himself into opponents’ minds and comprehend their fears and anxieties instead of blowing them up into all-powerful bugaboos, giving him courage when others quailed.”

— Ron Chernow

186. “Fisher Ames observed of Hamilton that the common people don’t want leaders “whom they see elevated by nature and education so far above their heads.”

— Ron Chernow

187. “D. Rockefeller drew strength by simplifying reality and strongly believed that excessive reflection upon unpleasant but unalterable events only weakened one’s resolve in the face of enemies.”

— Ron Chernow

188. “Both Hamilton and Jefferson believed in democracy, but Hamilton tended to be more suspicious of the governed and Jefferson of the governors.”

— Ron Chernow

189. “The New York Times foresaw that in future generations “if a great soldier is indomitable in purpose and exhaustless in courage, endurance, and equanimity; if he is free from vanity and pettiness, if he is unpretentious, truthful, frank, constant, generous to friends, magnanimous to foes, and patriotic to the core, of him it will be said, ‘He is like Grant.’”144.”

— Ron Chernow

190. “The Federalists were allied with powerful banking and merchant interests in New England and on the Atlantic seaboard and were disproportionately Congregationalists and Episcopalians.”

— Ron Chernow

191. “The inquiry constantly is what will please, not what will benefit the people,” he told Morris. “In such a government there can be nothing but temporary expedient, fickleness, and folly.”15.”

— Ron Chernow

192. “The speech lacked soaring cadences or memorable lines, yet it touched on two explosive issues at the finale. He advised Native Americans that their days as a hunting, gathering people were numbered and that he favored “civilization, christianization and ultimate citizenship” for them.89 Then, in sharp contrast to his predecessor, Grant championed black suffrage.”

— Ron Chernow

193. “As his life steadily unraveled, he pawned his gold watch and chain for $20 on December 23, 1857, to purchase Christmas presents for his children – perhaps the symbolic nadir of his life.”

— Ron Chernow

194. “Again and again in his career, Hamilton committed the same political error: he never knew when to stop, and the resulting excesses led him into irremediable indiscretions.”

— Ron Chernow

195. “More than anyone else, the omnipresent Hamilton galvanized, inspired, and scandalized the newborn nation, serving as a flash point for pent-up conflicts of class, geography, race, religion, and ideology. His contemporaries often seemed defined by how they reacted to the political gauntlets that he threw down repeatedly with such defiant panache.”

— Ron Chernow

196. “The American Revolution was to succeed because it was undertaken by skeptical men who knew that the same passions that toppled tyrannies could be applied to destructive ends.”

— Ron Chernow

197. “Rather than make peace with John Adams, he was ready, if necessary, to blow up the Federalist party and let Jefferson become president. The.”

— Ron Chernow

198. “Hamilton’s relatively short life robbed him not only of any chance for further accomplishment but of the opportunity to mold his historical image.”

— Ron Chernow

199. “112 In another message he wrote, “I am a verb instead of a personal pronoun. A verb is anything that signifies to be; to do; or to suffer. I signify all three.”

— Ron Chernow

200. “Seven months after Grant’s death, Julia received a whopping $200,000 check from Twain and $450,000 in the end – an astonishing sum for book royalties at the time. No previous book had ever sold so many copies in such a short period of time, and it rivaled that other literary sensation of the nineteenth century, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Clearly Grant had emerged victorious in his last uphill battle.”

— Ron Chernow