342 Quotes by Ron Chernow

Americans often wonder how this moment could have spawned such extraordinary men as Hamilton and Madison. Part of the answer is that the Revolution produced an insatiable need for thinkers who could generate ideas and wordsmiths who could lucidly expound them. The immediate utility of ideas was an incalculable tonic for the founding generation. The fate of the democratic experiment depended upon political intellectuals who might have been marginalized at other periods.

Both Grant and Sherman were damaged souls who would redeem tarnished reputations in the brutal crucible of war.

Willful waste makes woeful want.

While the folks at home embraced him as an improbable hero, Washington was denigrated in England as a reckless young warrior and in France as an outright assassin. He would have been crestfallen to know that, for some high-ranking folks in London, his behavior only confirmed that.

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.

Of the two policies that Hamilton wished to promote – the federal assumption of state debt and the selection of New York as the capital – assumption was incomparably more important to him. It was the most effective and irrevocable way to yoke the states together into a permanent union.

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.

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.

Such is my opinion of your abilities as a critic,” Hamilton addressed him directly, “that I very much prefer your disapprobation to your applause.