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.

I have developed a very strong partiality for the dead: they don't talk back, they don't sue, and they don't have angry relatives.

The best argument for mutual funds is that they offer safety and diversification. But they don't necessarily offer safety and diversification.

I think there's a tide that tends to carry historians back to the past.

Mutual funds have historically offered safety and diversification. And they spare you the responsibility of picking individual stocks.

In the 1920s you could buy stocks on margin. You could put 10 percent down and borrow the rest against your stocks.

Hamilton had one of those extraordinary 18th-century minds that touched on virtually every major topic of the day.