Michael > Michael's Quotes

“What should we do? I was beginning to understand a few words of Spanish: to escape, fugar; prisoner, preso; to kill, matar; chain, cadena; handcuffs, esposas; man, hombre; woman, mujer.”
― Henri Charrière, Papillon

“We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Lee wanted to sneak men across the Hudson at low tide and snatch Clinton as he dozed. Hamilton spiked the plan with a cogent objection, telling Washington that if Clinton was taken prisoner “it would be our misfortune, since the British government could not find another commander so incompetent to send in his place.”24”
― Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton

“Hamilton then went off to confer with Lafayette. When the two young men returned, they found their usually composed commander fighting back tears. “Arnold has betrayed us!” Washington said with profound emotion. “Whom can we trust now?”
― Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton

“Few, if any, other founding fathers opposed slavery more consistently or toiled harder to eradicate it than Hamilton—a fact that belies the historical stereotype that he cared only for the rich and privileged.”
― Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton

“the fiery and destructive passions of war reign in the human breast with much more powerful sway than the mild and beneficent sentiments of peace.”54”
― Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton

“His funding system was premised upon a simple concept: that the debt had been generated by the Revolution, that all Americans had benefited equally from that revolution, and that they should assume collective responsibility for its debt. If state debts were unequal, so were the sacrifices made during the fighting.”
― Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton

“The country, still reeling from programs the treasury secretary had churned out in a mere fifteen months, was learning just how fertile Hamilton’s brain was. He was setting in place the building blocks for a powerful state: public credit, an efficient tax system, a customs service, and now a strong central bank.”
― Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton