 Any one who believes that any great enterprise of an industrial character can be started without labor must have little experience of life. |
| Joint-stock companies are yet in their infancy, and incorporated capital, instead of being a thing which can be overturned, is a thing which is becoming more and more indispensable. |
| We throw all our attention on the utterly idle question whether A has done as well as B, when the only question is whether A has done as well as he could. |
| It is often said that the earth belongs to the race, as if raw land was a boon, or gift. |
| It is the tendency of the social burdens to crush out the middle class, and to force society into an organization of only two classes, one at each social extreme. |
| Men of routine or men who can do what they are told are not hard to find; but men who can think and plan and tell the routine men what to do are very rare. |
| A drunkard in the gutter is just where he ought to be, according to the fitness and tendency of things. Nature has set upon him the process of decline and dissolution by which she removes things which have survived their usefulness. |
| Then, again, the ability to organize and conduct industrial, commercial, or financial enterprises is rare; the great captains of industry are as rare as great generals. |
| Perhaps they do not recognize themselves, for a rich man is even harder to define than a poor one. |
| One thing must be granted to the rich: they are goodnatured. |
| There is every indication that we are to see new developments of the power of aggregated capital to serve civilization, and that the new developments will be made right here in America. |
| I never have known a man of ordinary common-sense who did not urge upon his sons, from earliest childhood, doctrines of economy and the practice of accumulation. |
| The forgotten man... He works, he votes, generally he prays, but his chief business in life is to pay. |
| Men never cling to their dreams with such tenacity as at the moment when they are losing faith in them, and know it, but do not dare yet to confess it to themselves. |
| Civil liberty is the status of the man who is guaranteed by law and civil institutions the exclusive employment of all his own powers for his own welfare. |
| We are to see the development of the country pushed forward at an unprecedented rate by an aggregation of capital, and a systematic application of it under the direction of competent men. |
| What we prepare for is what we shall get. |
| The aggregation of large fortunes is not at all a thing to be regretted. |
| If you ever live in a country run by a committee, be on the committee. |
| A good father believes that he does wisely to encourage enterprise, productive skill, prudent self-denial, and judicious expenditure on the part of his son. |
