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

202. “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

203. “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

204. “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

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

— Ron Chernow

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

— Ron Chernow

207. “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

208. “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

209. “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

210. “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

211. “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

212. “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

213. “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

214. “So it may be said, with undoubted truth, that the whiskey drinkers made Mr. Jefferson the President of the United States.”48.”

— Ron Chernow

215. “In addition to his better-known title of Father of His Country, Washington is also revered in certain circles as the Father of the American Mule.”

— Ron Chernow

216. “The blessings and protection of Heaven are at all times necessary, but especially so in times of public distress and danger,” he assured his men, hoping “that every officer and man will endeavor so to live and act as becomes a Christian soldier defending the dearest rights and liberties of his country.”

— Ron Chernow

217. “Could the fractious tendencies engendered by years of fighting be channeled in constructive directions? The Revolution had unified sharply disparate groups. Without the bonds of wartime comradeship, would the divisive pulls of class, region, and ideology tear the new country apart?”

— Ron Chernow

218. “After being Washington’s aide for four years and becoming the hero of Yorktown, Hamilton was viewed with a great deal of suspicion because of his association with Tories.”

— Ron Chernow

219. “Washington quibbled with Hamilton on one or two points but otherwise stood in perfect agreement. His letter to Hamilton again corroborates what the Jeffersonians found difficult to credit: that Washington never shied away from differing with the redoubtable Hamilton but agreed with him on the vast majority of issues.”

— Ron Chernow

220. “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

221. “The 1800 elections revealed, for the first time, the powerful centrist pull of American politics – the electorate’s tendency to rein in anything perceived as extreme.”

— Ron Chernow

222. “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.”

— Ron Chernow

223. “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

224. “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

225. “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

226. “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

227. “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

228. “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

229. “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

230. “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

231. “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

232. “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

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

— Ron Chernow

234. “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

235. “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

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

— Ron Chernow

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

— Ron Chernow

238. “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

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

— Ron Chernow

240. “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

241. “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

242. “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

243. “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

244. “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

245. “We really haven’t had very much experience with people funding their retirement out of the stock market, and we don’t know, frankly, how it would work under every scenario.”

— Ron Chernow

246. “In number 71, Hamilton presented his theory of presidents as leaders who should act for the popular good, even if the people were sometimes deluded about their interests.”

— Ron Chernow

247. “Now, for reasons both symbolic and practical, the crowd pulled George III down from his pedestal, decapitating him in the process. The four thousand pounds of gilded lead was rushed off to Litchfield, Connecticut, where it was melted down to make 42,088 musket bullets. One wit predicted that the king’s soldiers “will probably have melted majesty fired at them.” 56.”

— Ron Chernow

248. “Grant notified the president that he had vacated the office and no longer functioned as war secretary. Faced with this fait accompli, Johnson was furious, believing Grant should have resigned his post and allowed him to name a successor.”

— Ron Chernow

249. “America’s character would be defined by how it treated its vanquished enemies, and.”

— Ron Chernow

250. “In closing, Washington referred to the character of Jesus, “the Divine author of our blessed religion.”32.”

— Ron Chernow