Ron Chernow Quotes

After the American Revolution Alexander Hamilton wanted to study law, but there were no law books. So Hamilton wrote them.

Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson hated each other so much. But that hate that they had for each other did not come before the love of their country.

Fairfax was incredibly important to the shaping of the country.

These days we think our politics are nasty and partisan. But our discourse looks like a Platonic symposium compared with the vicious fighting that marked the early Republic.

Interest in the Founders has risen and fallen over time, as has admiration for them and their accomplishments.

America's veterans embody the ideals upon which America was founded more than 229 years ago.

The United States established itself as a trustworthy new nation in its first two decades after the Revolutionary War by paying its debts, even when many in the country believed it had no obligation to do so. Alexander Hamilton, the founder of this newspaper, insisted on it.

Never did a government commence under auspices so favorable, nor ever was success so complete.

People have always said - those words, 'too conservative,' is fairly relative. I'm sure that they probably said that about Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and Benjamin Franklin.

It took us in this country 11 years to get from the Declaration of Independence to the Constitution.

The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country - and we haven't seen them since.

Founding Fathers

… the most dramatic moment in the early politics of the Union.

Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom & Father of the University of Virginia

The Union is older than any of the States, and, in fact created them as States.

If the American Revolution had produced nothing but the Declaration of Independence, it would have been worthwhile.

I don't subscribe to the idea that the founders or anyone else were somehow better than us and that we have to live up to their example.

Hamilton was young, dashing, and romantic. He lent himself perfectly to be the star of a musical.

The presidency made John Adams an old man long before there was television. As early as the nation's first contested presidential election, with Adams and Jefferson running to succeed Washington, you had a brutal, ugly, vicious campaign that was divisive and as partisan as anything we're experiencing today.

The American world had - seemingly, at least - become a Jeffersonian world by the election of 1800, which placed Thomas Jefferson in the presidency. Jefferson had been Hamilton's rival in the new government's early years, and Hamilton has figured in the public memory almost as much for that rivalry as for his positive achievements.

Everybody knows that Alexander Hamilton was a founding father of the United States, a young father to be sure: only thirty at the time of the Constitutional Convention and just turned thirty-eight when he left behind his brilliant career as Secretary of the Treasury.

Those men who laid the foundation of this American government and signed he Declaration of Independence were the best spirits the God of heaven could find on the face of the earth. They were choice spirits . . . noble spirits before God.

Thomas Jefferson survives.

Where Washington hath left His awful memory A light for after times!

Let's find those people whose names do not cause controversy in our present and in our future. Let's name the monuments and streets for those people whose names do not provoke conflict.