Top 280 Ron Chernow Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “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

202. “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

203. “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

204. “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

205. “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

206. “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

207. “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

208. “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

209. “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

210. “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

211. “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

212. “Months after leaving office, he wrote to the Bank of the United States and admitted that he did not know his account balance because he had lost his bank book – this from the man who had created the bank. He.”

— Ron Chernow

213. “Around this time, Mark Twain belonged to a small, irregular Confederate company and later claimed for comic effect that he had been pursued by Grant’s troops. As he said facetiously, “I did not know that this was the future General Grant or I would have turned and attacked him. I supposed it was just some ordinary Colonel of no particular consequence, so I let him go.”35 In fact, Twain had been in the vicinity weeks earlier.”

— Ron Chernow

214. “John Adams summed up the case succinctly: “In general, our generals have been outgeneralled.”

— Ron Chernow

215. “This fierce defender of private property – this man for whom contracts were to be sacred covenants – expressly denied the sanctity of any agreement that stripped people of their freedom.”

— Ron Chernow

216. “Tis with governments as with individuals, first impressions and early habits give a lasting bias to the temper and character.”

— Ron Chernow

217. “Hamilton has often been extolled as the exponent of a rational foreign policy based on cool calculations of national self-interest. But his April 14 letter expressed his unswerving conviction that nations, transported by strong emotion, often miscalculate their interests: “Wars oftener proceed from angry and perverse passions than from cool calculations of interest.”

— Ron Chernow

218. “He recoiled at the cowardice and selfishness he saw rampant in the New York legislature. “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 Increasingly Hamilton despaired of pure democracy, of politicians simply catering to the popular will, and favored educated leaders who would enlighten the people and exercise their own judgment. Whatever.”

— Ron Chernow

219. “I’m dubious about having Social Security put into the stock market. I think that we have gotten very far away from the idea that there’s something sacrosanct about retirement investments.”

— Ron Chernow

220. “A group of Wall Street admirers created for Grant a $250,000 Presidential Retiring Fund, which would not only yield $15,000 in annual interest but reinforce his image as overly beholden to the rich. To supplement his income, Grant returned to his.”

— Ron Chernow

221. “In a country riven by quarrels, Hamilton produced a vision of harmonious parts. Agriculture and commerce were mutually beneficial. North and south, the western frontier and the eastern seaboard, enjoyed complementary economies. The only thing needed to capitalize on these strengths was national unity.”

— Ron Chernow

222. “By the end of Grant’s second term, white Democrats, through the “redeemer” movement, had reclaimed control of every southern state, winning in peacetime much of the power lost in combat. They promulgated a view of the Civil War as a righteous cause that had nothing to do with slavery but only states’ rights – to which an incredulous James Longstreet once replied, “I never heard of any other cause of the quarrel than slavery.”

— Ron Chernow

223. “The issue of press freedom was all the more important because the spirit of faction, “that mortal poison to our land,” had spread through America. He worried that a certain unnamed party might impose despotism: “To watch the progress of such endeavours is the office of a free press. To give us early alarm and put us on our guard against the encroachments of power. This then is a right of the utmost importance, one for which, instead of yielding it up, we ought rather to spill our blood.”

— Ron Chernow

224. “Another female observer found Madison entertaining in private but “mute, cold, and repulsive” in company.”

— Ron Chernow

225. “In May, when a Senate committee took up the explosive issue of titles, Adams suggested that Washington be addressed as “His Highness, the President of the United States of America and Protector of their Liberties.”34 Adams provided fodder for contemporary wags and was promptly dubbed “His Rotundity” or the “Duke of Braintree.”

— Ron Chernow

226. “This falling-out was to be more than personal, for the rift between Hamilton and Madison precipitated the start of the two-party system in America. The funding debate shattered the short-lived political consensus that had ushered in the new government. For the next five years, the political spectrum in America was defined by whether people endorsed or opposed Alexander Hamilton’s programs.”

— Ron Chernow

227. “I think there’s a tide that tends to carry historians back to the past.”

— Ron Chernow

228. “By the late 1980s people realized that houses did not always appreciate and that they could fluctuate like any other market commodity.”

— Ron Chernow

229. “Abigail Adams, who did not set sail until November, seemed miffed by the enforced southward shift, swearing that she would try to enjoy Philadelphia but that “when all is done it will not be Broadway.”

— Ron Chernow

230. “Early disappointments with people left Washington with a residual cynicism that was to jibe well with Hamilton’s views.”

— Ron Chernow

231. “Having prospered as a merchant, Jesse was now worth $100,000 – equivalent to nearly $3 million today – and employed about fifty people. When he reached sixty in 1854, he had begun to withdraw from active management of his business interests. His holdings included several tanneries near Portsmouth, Ohio, and leather goods stores in Wisconsin, Iowa, and Galena, Illinois.”

— Ron Chernow

232. “The free school is the promoter of that intelligence which is to preserve us as a free nation. If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon’s, but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side – and superstition, ambition, and ignorance on the other.”

— Ron Chernow

233. “Few First Ladies – and the name wasn’t yet commonly used – have so reveled in the White House or developed such a proprietary feeling about it. “Eight happy years I spent there – so happy!” Julia would reminisce. “It still seems as much like home to me as the old farm in Missouri, White Haven.”

— Ron Chernow

234. “To Jefferson we owe the self-congratulatory language of Fourth of July oratory, the evangelical conviction that America serves as a beacon to all humanity. Jefferson told John Dickinson, “Our revolution and its consequences will ameliorate the condition of man over a great portion of the globe.” 54 At least on paper, Jefferson possessed a more all-embracing view of democracy than Hamilton, who was always frightened by a sense of the fickle and fallible nature of the masses. Having.”

— Ron Chernow

235. “Of the nine American presidents who owned slaves – a list that includes his fellow Virginians Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe – only Washington set free all of his slaves.”

— Ron Chernow

236. “Unlike Franklin or Jefferson, he never learned to subdue his opponents with a light touch or a sly, artful, understated turn of phrase.”

— Ron Chernow

237. “Reared with Methodist modesty, he could never admit nakedly to the true depth of his ambition. In this way, he was strictly Hannah Grant’s son, not Jesse’s. Ethical and honorable, he wanted to receive jobs based squarely on his merits, a faith he held so unalterably he called it “one of my superstitions.”

— Ron Chernow

238. “He thought America’s character would be defined by how it treated its vanquished enemies, and he wanted to graduate from bitter wartime grievances to the forgiving posture of peace.”

— Ron Chernow

239. “In other words, Julia still believed in the beneficial effects of tobacco long after her husband had likely died from it. Even grimacing with pain, Grant tracked presidential politics intently.”

— Ron Chernow

240. “Washington presented a rare case of a revolutionary leader who, instead of being blinded by political fervor, recognized that fallible human beings couldn’t always live up to the high standards he set for them.”

— Ron Chernow

241. “Washington initially oversaw a larger staff of slaves and servants at Mount Vernon than he did as president of the United States – but the new government quickly overshadowed his estate in size.”

— Ron Chernow

242. “It is the child of avarice, the brother of inequity, and father of mischief. It has been the ruin of many worthy families, the loss of many a man’s honor, and the cause of suicide. To all those who enter the list, it is equally fascinating. The successful gamester pushes his good fortune till it is overtaken by a reverse. The losing gamester, in hopes of retrieving past misfortunes, goes on from bad to worse.”37 Washington.”

— Ron Chernow

243. “The strident tone of “The Stand” reflects the polarization that had gripped America over the French crisis. Feelings ran so high that Jefferson told one correspondent, “Men who have been intimate all their lives cross the street to avoid meeting and turn their heads another way, lest they should be obliged to touch hats.”

— Ron Chernow

244. “Everything was perfectly sorted, classified, and slotted in his compartmentalized mind and books. Washington’s contemporaries recognized that this compulsive note taking, this itch to record his every action, went to the very essence of this well-regulated man.”

— Ron Chernow

245. “Grant worded his message to remove any suspicion that he spoke for a particular religious denomination. Also buried in his statement was a courageous, farsighted plea for free, universal education for black children. The laconic Grant’s crusade for public education was a unique event in his presidency, the result of a riveting speech that had forced an issue on the national consciousness through powerful oratory.”

— Ron Chernow

246. “Early on, New York already had a national and even international identity.”

— Ron Chernow

247. “In February 1878, Grant braved rain, wind, and snow to become the first American president to visit Jerusalem. He met with a delegation of American Jews who distributed relief to their suffering brethren in the Holy Land and he promised to carry their message to Jewish leaders at home. As they entered religious sites, Julia was susceptible to powerful emotions, her active imagination a perfect foil for her husband’s skeptical, deadpan humor.”

— Ron Chernow

248. “Man proposes and God disposes.”

— Ron Chernow

249. “I don’t think that a mutual fund that invests exclusively in biotech start-ups or invests exclusively in companies in Thailand offers any great safety or diversification.”

— Ron Chernow

250. “Grant’s fortuitous move to Illinois on the eve of the election had monumental consequences, conveniently situating him in the president’s home state and overtly pro-Union northern Illinois. It also placed him in the district of Congressman Elihu B. Washburne, an emphatic Lincoln supporter. Had Grant remained in Missouri, riven by internal strife, he would never have enjoyed the same chance for rapid advancement in the coming war.”

— Ron Chernow