John D Rockefeller Quotes

Don't be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.

I do not think there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature.

A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship

The secret to success is to do the common things uncommonly well.

I would rather hire a man with enthusiasm, than a man who knows everything.

The most important thing for a young man is to establish a credit . . . a reputation, character.

Charity is injurious unless it helps the recipient to become independent of it.

I was early taught to work as well as play, My life has been one long, happy holiday; Full of work and full of play- I dropped the worry on the way- And God was good to me every day.

The ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee. And I will pay more for that ability.

If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths, rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.

Next to doing the right thing, the most important thing is to let people know you are doing the right thing.

A man has no right to occupy another man’s time unnecessarily

I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty.

I always tried to turn every disaster into an opportunity.

Success comes from keeping the ears open and the mouth closed” and “A man of words and not of deeds is like a garden full of weeds.

Singleness of purpose is one of the chief essentials for success in life, no matter what may be one's aim.

If your only goal is to become rich, you will never achieve it.

Go as far as you can see; when you get there, you'll be able to see farther.

Rockefeller equated silence with strength: Weak men had loose tongues and blabbed to reporters, while prudent businessmen kept their own counsel.

I would rather earn 1% off a 100 people's efforts than 100% of my own efforts.

I believe in the supreme worth of the individual and in his right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty. I believe that the law was made for man and not man for the law; that government is the servant of the people and not their master. I believe in the dignity of labor, whether with head or hand; that the world owes no man a living but that it owes every man an opportunity to make a living. I believe that thrift is essential to well-ordered living and that economy is a prime requisite of a sound financial structure, whether in government, business or personal affairs. I believe that truth and justice are fundamental to an enduring social order. I believe in the sacredness of a promise, that a man's word should be as good as his bond, that character—not wealth or power or position—is of supreme worth. I believe that the rendering of useful service is the common duty of mankind and that only in the purifying fire of sacrifice is the dross of selfishness consumed and the greatness of the human soul set free. I believe in an all-wise and all-loving God, named by whatever name, and that the individual's highest fulfillment, greatest happiness and widest usefulness are to be found in living in harmony with His will. I believe that love is the greatest thing in the world; that it alone can overcome hate; that right can and will triumph over might.

Success comes from keeping the ears open and the mouth closed" ~ John D. Rockefeller

It is very important to remember what other people tell you, not so much what you yourself already know.

Nobody does anything if he can get anybody else to do it

It is one thing to stand on the comfortable ground of placid inaction and put forth words of cynical wisdom, and another to plunge into the work itself and through strenuous experience earn the right to express strong conclusions.

The only thing which is of lasting benefit to a man is that which he does for himself. Money which comes to him without effort on his part is seldom a benefit and often a curse.

The ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee,” he once said, “and I pay more for that ability than for any other under the sun.

Do not many of us who fail to achieve big things … fail because we lack concentration—the art of concentrating the mind on the thing to be done at the proper time and to the exclusion of everything else?

If those who ‘gain all they can’ and ‘save all they can,’ will likewise ‘give all they can,’ then the more they will grow in grace.

The impression was gaining ground with me that it was a good thing to let the money be my slave and not make myself a slave to money.

Oh how blessed the young men are who have to struggle for a foundation and a beginning in life. I shall never cease to be grateful for the three and a half years of apprenticeship and the difficulties to be overcome, all the way along.

I believe that love is the greatest thing in the world; that it alone can overcome hate...” – John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

In the same way the failures which a man makes in his life are due almost always to some defect in his personality, some weakness of body, or mind, or character, will, or temperament. The only way to overcome these failings is to build up his personality from within, so that he, by virtue of what is within him, may overcome the weakness which was the cause of the failure. It is only those efforts the man himself puts forth that can really help him.

The great Allied campaign to celebrate (or sell) Democracy, etc., was a venture so successful, and, it seemed, so noble, that it suddenly legitimized such propagandists, who, once the war had ended, went right to work massaging or exciting various publics on behalf of entities like General Motors, Procter & Gamble, John D. Rockefeller, General Electric.

Daring in design, cautious in execution—it was a formula he made his own throughout his career.

Willful waste makes woeful want.

The way to make money is to buy when blood is running in the street. John D. Rockefeller

Don't waste effort on a thing that ends in a petty triumph unless you are happy with a life of petty success

Good management consists of showing average people how to do the work of superior people.

John D. Rockefeller, who was as rich as they come, believed that “a man’s wealth must be determined by the relation of his desires and expenditures to his income. If he feels rich on $10 and has everything he desires, he really is rich.” Today, you could try to increase your wealth, or you could take a shortcut and just want less.

He downplayed the significance of technical knowledge in business. “I never felt the need of scientific knowledge, have never felt it. A young man who wants to succeed in business does not require chemistry or physics. He can always hire scientists.

John D. Rockefeller said, “the ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee. And I will pay more for that ability than for any other under the sun.

The impression was gaining ground with me that it was a good thing to let the money be my slave and not make myself a slave to money.

Rockefeller was sensitive about adults who behaved in a high-handed fashion toward him. Having assumed so much responsibility at home, he now thought of himself as a mature person.

When he died in 1525, his fortune came to just under 2 percent of European economic output. Not even John D. Rockefeller could claim that kind of wealth.

In 1917, John D. Rockefeller could have paid off the whole US public debt on his own. Today, Bill Gates’s entire fortune would barely cover two months’ interest.

Tenía una natural pasión por el detalle que con los años tuve que modificar para ser más eficiente.

D. Rockefeller drew strength by simplifying reality and strongly believed that excessive reflection upon unpleasant but unalterable events only weakened one’s resolve in the face of enemies.

You know who invented the twist, right?” asked the man next to him. “It was John D. Rockefeller. He was a germophobe, and citrus was a natural disinfectant, so Rockefeller always asked his bartenders to run a lemon peel around the rim of his glass.

As to why God had singled out John D. Rockefeller for such spectacular bounty, Rockefeller always adverted to his own adherence to the doctrine of stewardship—the notion of the wealthy man as a mere instrument of God, a temporary trustee of his money, who devoted it to good causes. “It has seemed as if I was favored and got increase because the Lord knew that I was going to turn around and give it back.”73

America's industrial success produced a roll call of financial magnificence: Rockefellers, Morgans, Astors, Mellons, Fricks, Carnegies, Goulds, du Ponts, Belmonts, Harrimans, Huntingtons, Vanderbilts, and many more based in dynastic wealth of essentially inexhaustible proportions. John D. Rockefeller made $1 billion a year, measured in today's money, and paid no income tax. No one did, for income tax did not yet exist in America. Congress tried to introduce an income tax of 2 percent on earnings of $4,000 in 1894, but the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional. Income tax wouldn't become a regular part of American Life until 1914. People would never be this rich again. Spending all this wealth became for many a more or less full-time occupation. A kind of desperate, vulgar edge became attached to almost everything they did. At one New York dinner party, guests found the table heaped with sand and at each place a little gold spade; upon a signal, they were invited to dig in and search for diamonds and other costly glitter buried within. At another party - possibly the most preposterous ever staged - several dozen horses with padded hooves were led into the ballroom of Sherry's, a vast and esteemed eating establishment, and tethered around the tables so that the guests, dressed as cowboys and cowgirls, could enjoy the novel and sublimely pointless pleasure of dining in a New York ballroom on horseback.

Growing up as a miniature adult, burdened with duties, he developed an exaggerated sense of responsibility that would be evident throughout his life.

John D. Rockefeller Jr. said, “I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty.” The

The road to happiness lies in two simple principles— find what interests you and that you can do and put your whole soul into it.” —John D. Rockefeller III

The Cloisters, I knew, had been brought into being—like so many institutions—by John D. Rockefeller Jr.

I always tried to turn every disaster into an opportunity

It never seemed to dawn on her to encourage her children to have a good time.

I never would have been able to tithe the first million dollars I ever made if I had not tithed my first salary, which was $1.50 per week. John D. Rockefeller

uno no puede tener éxito en los negocios si no tiene un olfato para las oportunidades.

Taking for granted the growth of his empire, he hired talented people as found, not as needed.

When New Yorkers went to the polls a few weeks later, election officials came across the names of two unexpected write-in candidates for state treasurer: John D. Rockefeller and Charles Ponzi.

He had a great general’s ability to focus on his goals and brush aside obstacles as petty distractions. “You can abuse me, you can strike me,” Rockefeller said, “so long as you let me have my own way.

In the heyday of his activity, John D. Rockefeller said that ‘the ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee.’ ‘And I will pay more for that ability,’ said John D., ‘than for any other under the sun.

John D. Rockefeller, who was as rich as they come, believed that “a man’s wealth must be determined by the relation of his desires and expenditures to his income. If he feels rich on $10 and has everything he desires, he really is rich.

There are business and investment opportunities coming that will create bigger fortunes than the automobile did for Henry Ford, oil did for John D. Rockefeller, computers did for Bill Gates, and the Internet did for the young founders of Yahoo, Google, and Facebook.

In his early days in business, Rockefeller often suffered from severe neck pains that might have indicated stress on the job, and he turned to horses as a therapeutic diversion. “I would leave my office in the afternoon and drive a pair of fast horses as hard as they could go: trot, break, gallop—everything.

One of Rockefeller’s favorite stories reveals her coolheaded response to danger: Mother had whooping cough and was staying in her room so that we should not catch it. When she heard thieves trying to get at the back of the house and remembered that there was no man to protect us, she softly opened the window and began to sing some old Negro melody, just as if the family were up and about. The robbers turned away from the house, crossed the road to the carriage house, stole a set of harness and went down the hill to their boat at the shore.18 From such early experiences, John D. took away a deep, abiding respect for women; unlike other moguls of the Gilded Age, he never saw them in purely ornamental terms.

Nelson W. Aldrich of Rhode Island. Aldrich, a multimillionaire, a card-playing partner of J. Pierpont Morgan, the father-in-law of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, was the ultimate Washington power broker. “I’m just a president,” Roosevelt once told the journalist Lincoln Steffens, “and he has seen lots of presidents.

The word aristocrat itself was becoming almost a curse throughout the North, and travelers’ reports of the South’s pestilence-ridden, barefooted backwardness were staples of the northern press. It was implicitly understood, as one historian put it, that “two profoundly different and antagonistic civilizations . . . were competing for control of the political system.

For this boy destined to be the world’s greatest heir, money was so omnipresent as to be invisible—something “there, like air or food or any other element,” he later said—yet it was never easily attainable.11 As if he were a poor, rural boy, he earned pocket change by mending vases and broken fountain pens or by sharpening pencils. Aware of the rich children spoiled by their parents, Senior seized every opportunity to teach his son the value of money. Once, while Rockefeller was being shaved at Forest Hill, Junior entered with a plan to give away his Sunday-school money in one lump sum, for a fixed period, and be done with it. “Let’s figure it out first,” Rockefeller advised and made Junior run through calculations that showed he would lose eleven cents interest while the Sunday school gained nothing in return. Afterward, Rockefeller told his barber, “I don’t care about the boy giving his money in that way. I want him to give it. But I also want him to learn the lesson of being careful of the little things.

August 29th WANT NOTHING = HAVE EVERYTHING “No person has the power to have everything they want, but it is in their power not to want what they don’t have, and to cheerfully put to good use what they do have.” —SENECA, MORAL LETTERS, 123.3 Is there a person so rich that there is literally nothing they can’t afford? Surely there isn’t. Even the richest people regularly fail in their attempts to buy elections, to purchase respect, class, love, and any number of other things that are not for sale. If obscene wealth will never get you everything you want, is that the end of it? Or is there another way to solve for that equation? To the Stoics, there is: by changing what it is that you want. By changing how you think, you’ll manage to get it. John D. Rockefeller, who was as rich as they come, believed that “a man’s wealth must be determined by the relation of his desires and expenditures to his income. If he feels rich on $10 and has everything he desires, he really is rich.” Today, you could try to increase your wealth, or you could take a shortcut and just want less.

And so, as the passengers drifted off to sleep to the rhythmic clicking of steel wheels against rail, little did they dream that, riding in the car at the end of their train, were six men who represented an estimated one-fourth of the total wealth of the entire world. This was the roster of the Aldrich car that night: Nelson W. Aldrich, Republican "whip" in the Senate, Chairman of the National Monetary Commission, business associate of J.P. Morgan, father-in-law to John D. Rockefeller, Jr.; Abraham Piatt Andrew, Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury; Frank A. Vanderlip, president of the National City Bank of New York, the most powerful of the banks at that time, representing William Rockefeller and the international investment banking house of Kuhn, Loeb & Company; Henry P. Davison, senior partner of the J.P. Morgan Company; Benjamin Strong, head of J.P. Morgan's Bankers Trust Company;1 6. Paul M. Warburg, a partner in Kuhn, Loeb & Company, a representative of the Rothschild banking dynasty in England and France, and brother to Max Warburg who was head of the Warburg banking consortium in Germany and the Netherlands.2

When history passes its final verdict on John D. Rockefeller, it may well be that his endowment of research will be recognized as a milestone in the progress of the race. For the first time, science was given its head; longer term experiment on a large scale has been made practicable, and those that undertake are freed from the shadow of financial disaster. Science today owes as much to the rich men of generosity and discernment as the art of the Renaissance owes to the patronage of Popes and Princes. Of these rich men, John D. Rockefeller is the supreme type. Winston Spencer Churchill

The Austrian born Von Hayek has long been under the control of David Rockefeller, and Von Hayek theories have been fairly widely accepted in the United States for some time, especially in “conservative” circles. According to Von Hayek, a future United States economic platform must be based on (a) urban black markets, (b) small Hong Kong type industries utilizing sweatshop labor, (c) the tourist trade, (d) free enterprise zones where speculators can operate unhindered and where the drug trade can flourish, (e) the end of all industrial activity and (f) closing down of all nuclear energy plants.

Heaven and hell are created by ourselves. If you give meaning to your work, you will feel happy regardless of its size and you will feel fulfilled no matter what self-set results you have attained. If you don’t like to do anything, even the simplest things will become difficult and boring. When you lament that this work is very tiring, despite not working hard, you will feel exhausted, in other words there is a huge difference. This is how things are. John, if you view work as a pleasure, life is heaven; if you view work as a duty, life is hell. Reflect on your work attitude, it will make everyone happy.

The Cloisters, I knew, had been brought into being—like so many institutions—by John D. Rockefeller Jr. The robber baron’s son had transformed sixty-six isolated acres and a small collection of medieval art into a fully realized medieval monastery. Crumbling remnants of twelfth-century abbeys and priories had been imported throughout the 1930s from Europe and rebuilt under the watchful eye of architect Charles Collens. Buildings that had been left to the ravages of weather and wars were reassembled and polished to a new-world sheen—entire twelfth-century chapels restored, marble colonnades buffed to their original gloss.

On the labour front in 1919 there was an unprecedented number of strikes involving many millions of workers. One of the lager strikes was mounted by the AF of L against the United States Steel Corporation. At that time workers in the steel industry put in an average sixty-eight-hour week for bare subsistence wages. The strike spread to other plants, resulting in considerable violence -- the death of eighteen striking workers, the calling out of troops to disperse picket lines, and so forth. By branding the strikers Bolsheviks and thereby separating them from their public support, the Corporation broke the strike. In Boston, the Police Department went on strike and governor Calvin Coolidge replaced them. In Seattle there was a general strike which precipitated a nationwide 'red scare'. this was the first red scare. Sixteen bombs were found in the New York Post Office just before May Day. The bombs were addressed to men prominent in American life, including John D. Rockefeller and Attorney General Mitchell Palmer. It is not clear today who was responsible for those bombs -- Red terrorists, Black anarchists, or their enemies -- but the effect was the same. Other bombs pooped off all spring, damaging property, killing and maiming innocent people, and the nation responded with an alarm against Reds. It was feared that at in Russia, they were about to take over the country and shove large cocks into everyone's mother. Strike that. The Press exacerbated public feeling. May Day parades in the big cities were attacked by policemen, and soldiers and sailors. The American Legion, just founded, raided IWW headquarters in the State of Washington. Laws against seditious speech were passed in State Legislatures across the country and thousands of people were jailed, including a Socialist Congressman from Milwaukee who was sentenced to twenty years in prison. To say nothing of the Espionage and Sedition Acts of 1917 which took care of thousands more. To say nothing of Eugene V. Debs. On the evening of 2 January 1920, Attorney General Palmer, who had his eye on the White House, organized a Federal raid on Communist Party offices throughout the nation. With his right-hand assistant, J. Edgar Hoover, at his right hand, Palmer effected the arrest of over six thousand people, some Communist aliens, some just aliens, some just Communists, and some neither Communists nor aliens but persons visiting those who had been arrested. Property was confiscated, people chained together, handcuffed, and paraded through the streets (in Boston), or kept in corridors of Federal buildings for eight days without food or proper sanitation (in Detroit). Many historians have noted this phenomenon. The raids made an undoubted contribution to the wave of vigilantism winch broke over the country. The Ku Klux Klan blossomed throughout the South and West. There were night raidings, floggings, public hangings, and burnings. Over seventy Negroes were lynched in 1919, not a few of them war veterans. There were speeches against 'foreign ideologies' and much talk about 'one hundred per cent Americanism'. The teaching of evolution in the schools of Tennessee was outlawed. Elsewhere textbooks were repudiated that were not sufficiently patriotic. New immigration laws made racial distinctions and set stringent quotas. Jews were charged with international conspiracy and Catholics with trying to bring the Pope to America. The country would soon go dry, thus creating large-scale, organized crime in the US. The White Sox threw the Series to the Cincinnati Reds. And the stage was set for the trial of two Italian-born anarchists, N. Sacco and B. Vanzetti, for the alleged murder of a paymaster in South Braintree, Mass. The story of the trial is well known and often noted by historians and need not be recounted here. To nothing of World War II--

Another traveling companion remembered the Rockefellers sitting at a private dining room in a Roman hotel as the paterfamilias dissected the weekly bill, trying to ascertain whether they had really consumed two whole chickens, as these slippery foreigners alleged: Mr. Rockefeller listened for a while to the discussion, and then said quietly: “I can settle that very easily. John, did you have a chicken leg?” “Yes.” “Alta, did you have a chicken leg?” “Yes.” “Well, Mother, I think I remember that you had one. Is that right?” “Yes,” said the mother. “I know that I had one, and no chicken has 3 legs. The bill is correct.” I can still see the faces of that family group and hear the tone of Mr. Rockefeller’s voice as he so quietly and so uniquely settled that dispute.59 As he grew older, Junior was deputized to handle tips and bills, which he later cited as excellent business training.

After Standard Oil Company founder John D. Rockefeller became the richest man in the world, he offered gardening advice to a group of young men at a Brown University Bible study. He told his admiring audience, “The American Beauty Rose can be produced in the splendor and fragrance which bring cheer to its beholder only by sacrificing the early buds which grow up around it. This is not an evil tendency in business. It is merely the working-out of a law of nature and a law of God.” Rockefeller's audacious winner-take-all metaphor about the American Beauty rose was a description of how Standard Oil had bested its competitors. The clumsy reference to God at the end of the remarks was a meager attempt to morally sanction the ideas of philosopher Herbert Spencer, who had recently seduced the robber baron community by adapting scientific ideas like “survival of the fittest” into a loose form of Social Darwinism that defined Gilded Age business.

Cornelius Vanderbilt and his fellow tycoon John D. Rockefeller were often called 'robber barons'. Newspapers said they were evil, and ran cartoons showing Vanderbilt as a leech sucking the blood of the poor. Rockefeller was depicted as a snake. What the newspapers printed stuck--we still think of Vanderbilt and Rockefeller as 'robber barons'. But it was a lie. They were neither robbers nor barons. They weren't robbers, because they didn't steal from anyone, and they weren't barons--they were born poor. Vanderbilt got rich by pleasing people. He invented ways to make travel and shipping things cheaper. He used bigger ships, faster ships, served food onboard. People liked that. And the extra volume of business he attracted allowed him to lower costs. He cut the New York--Hartford fare from $8 to $1. That gave consumers more than any 'consumer group' ever has. It's telling that the 'robber baron' name-calling didn't come from consumers. It was competing businessmen who complained, and persuaded the media to join in. Rockefeller got rich selling oil. First competitors and then the government called him a monopolist, but he wasn't--he had competitors. No one was forced to buy his oil. Rockefeller enticed people to buy it by selling it for less. That's what his competitors hated. He found cheaper ways to get oil from the ground to the gas pump. This made life better for millions. Working-class people, who used to go to bed when it got dark, could suddenly afford fuel for their lanterns, so they could stay up and read at night. Rockefeller's greed might have even saved the whales, because when he lowered the price of kerosene and gasoline, he eliminated the need for whale oil. The mass slaughter of whales suddenly stopped. Bet your kids won't read 'Rockefeller saved the whales' in environmental studies class. Vanderbilt's and Rockefeller's goal might have been just to get rich. But to achieve that, they had to give us what we wanted.

In the late 1800s a certain man taught Sunday school for over 20 years in a Baptist church; he eventually became the wealthiest man in the world. He also did not pay tithes. He was not generous toward anyone, quite the opposite, he was the reason that journalists came up with the term, "Robber Baron." The man was John D. Rockefeller. He engaged in ruthless and illegal business practices and built an oil company called Standard Oil that was so large that, when it was broken up by antitrust laws, several major oil companies were created from that one company. Over one hundred years ago, John D. Rockefeller was worth over one billion dollars, which would be 50 to 100 billion dollars in today’s money. If he did pay tithes it would have meant an income of 100 million dollars (5 to 10 billion today) to his local church. It was not God that "blessed" him with great wealth; it was Satan, the god of greed. God does not lead people to engage in ruthless and illegal business practices in a desire for more, more, more. Even in his old age, he displayed his greed by giving away dimes. He always had dimes in his pocket so he could generously give one to people he met! What lessons are we to learn from this? One very important thing is that very often Satan will give people lots of money because Satan knows that money is very deceitful and can make even the most devout Christian materialistic and greedy. Let's take a look at another example. There is today a man who planned to become a missionary when he was young, but he not only turned against his calling, he turned against Christianity. Do you suppose that God has blessed this man? He is today a multi-billionaire, media-mogul. The man is Ted Turner, who started CNN and is a partner in Time-Warner and other media companies. Can we use him as an example that God blesses a righteous man? No, actually, the opposite is most likely true, that Satan prospers those who turn from the straight way.

Despite incessant disappointment, he doggedly pursued a position. Each morning, he left his boardinghouse at eight o’clock, clothed in a dark suit with a high collar and black tie, to make his rounds of appointed firms. This grimly determined trek went on each day—six days a week for six consecutive weeks—until late in the afternoon. The streets were so hot and hard that he grew footsore from pacing them. His perseverance surely owed something to his desire to end his reliance upon his fickle father. At one point, Bill suggested that if John didn’t find work he might have to return to the country; the thought of such dependence upon his father made “a cold chill” run down his spine, Rockefeller later said.27 Because he approached his job hunt devoid of any doubt or self-pity, he could stare down all discouragement. “I was working every day at my business—the business of looking for work. I put in my full time at this every day.”28 He was a confirmed exponent of positive thinking.

One Saturday afternoon, Gardner was about to escape from the office for an afternoon sail when he saw Rockefeller hunched glumly over his ledgers. “John,” he said agreeably, “a little crowd of us are going to take a sail over to Put-in-Bay and I’d like to have you go along. I think it would do you good to get away from the office and get your mind off business for a while.” Gardner had touched an exposed nerve and, as he recounted years later to a reporter, his young partner wheeled on him savagely. “George Gardner,” he sputtered, “you’re the most extravagant young man I ever knew! The idea of a young man like you, just getting a start in life, owning an interest in a yacht! You’re injuring your credit at the banks—your credit and mine.… No, I won’t go on your yacht. I don’t even want to see it!” With that, Rockefeller leaned back over his account books. “John,” said Gardner, “I see that there are certain things on which you and I probably will never agree. I think you like money better than anything else in the whole world, and I do not. I like to have a little fun along with business as I go through life.

At a time when moguls vied to impress people with their possessions, Rockefeller preferred comfort to refinement. His house was bare of hunting trophies, shelves of richly bound but unread books, or other signs of conspicuous consumption. Rockefeller molded his house for his own use, not to awe strangers. As he wrote of the Forest Hill fireplaces in 1877: “I have seen a good many fireplaces here [and] don’t think the character of our rooms will warrant going into the expenditures for fancy tiling and all that sort of thing that we find in some of the extravagant houses here. What we want is a sensible, plain arrangement in keeping with our rooms.”3 It took time for the family to adjust to Forest Hill. The house had been built as a hotel, and it showed: It had an office to the left of the front door, a dining room with small tables straight ahead, upstairs corridors lined with cubicle-sized rooms, and porches wrapped around each floor. The verandas, also decorated in resort style, were cluttered with bamboo furniture. It was perhaps this arrangement that tempted John and Cettie to run Forest Hill as a paying club for friends, and they got a dozen to come and stay during the summer of 1877. This venture proved no less of a debacle than the proposed sanatorium. As “club guests,” many visitors expected Cettie to function as their unlikely hostess. Some didn’t know they were in a commercial establishment and were shocked upon returning home to receive bills for their stay.

Convinced that struggle was the crucible of character, Rockefeller faced a delicate task in raising his children. He wanted to accumulate wealth while inculcating in them the values of his threadbare boyhood. The first step in saving them from extravagance was keeping them ignorant of their father’s affluence. Until they were adults, Rockefeller’s children never visited his office or refineries, and even then they were accompanied by company officials, never Father. At home, Rockefeller created a make-believe market economy, calling Cettie the “general manager” and requiring the children to keep careful account books.16They earned pocket money by performing chores and received two cents for killing flies, ten cents for sharpening pencils, five cents per hour for practicing their musical instruments, and a dollar for repairing vases. They were given two cents per day for abstaining from candy and a dime bonus for each consecutive day of abstinence. Each toiled in a separate patch of the vegetable garden, earning a penny for every ten weeds they pulled up. John Jr. got fifteen cents an hour for chopping wood and ten cents per day for superintending paths. Rockefeller took pride in training his children as miniature household workers. Years later, riding on a train with his thirteen-year-old daughter, he told a traveling companion, “This little girl is earning money already. You never could imagine how she does it. I have learned what my gas bills should average when the gas is managed with care, and I have told her that she can have for pin money all that she will save every month on this amount, so she goes around every night and keeps the gas turned down where it is not needed.”17 Rockefeller never tired of preaching economy and whenever a package arrived at home, he made a point of saving the paper and string. Cettie was equally vigilant. When the children clamored for bicycles, John suggested buying one for each child. “No,” said Cettie, “we will buy just one for all of them.” “But, my dear,” John protested, “tricycles do not cost much.” “That is true,” she replied. “It is not the cost. But if they have just one they will learn to give up to one another.”18 So the children shared a single bicycle. Amazingly enough, the four children probably grew up with a level of creature comforts not that far above what Rockefeller had known as a boy.

I was early taught to work as well as play, My life has been one long, happy holiday; Full of work and full of play— I dropped the worry on the way— And God was good to me every day. That titan was John D. Rockefeller, who wrote the poem at age eighty-six.

like to quote John D. Rockefeller, who said, “I always tried to turn every disaster into an opportunity.

Thus, when the banker John Pierpont Morgan left a fortune of $68 million in 1914, the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie is supposed to have remarked pityingly that he had by no means been “a rich man.”203 Carnegie’s own fortune and those of industrialists like John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford, and Andrew W. Mellon were over half a billion dollars. The rapidity of the concentration of wealth may be gauged from the fact that the largest American private fortunes grew from about $25 million in 1860 to $100 million twenty years later and $1 billion two decades after that. By 1900 the richest man in the United States had assets worth twelve times more than those of the richest European (who was a member of the English aristocracy); not even the Rothschilds (finance), the Krupps (steel, machinery, weapons), or the Beits (British/South African gold and diamond capital) were in the same league.

You know who invented the twist, right?” asked the man next to him. “It was John D. Rockefeller. He was a germophobe, and citrus was a natural disinfectant, so Rockefeller always asked his bartenders to run a lemon peel around the rim of his glass.” Eddie

At another point, they met an old man in the roadway whom John so sedulously drained of local lore that the latter finally pleaded with weary resignation, “For God’s sake if you will go with me over to that barn yonder, I will start and tell you everything I ever knew.”72 This was the same monotonously inquisitive young man who was known as “the Sponge” in the Oil Regions.

Musk’s vision, and, of late, execution seem to combine the best of Henry Ford and John D. Rockefeller. With

I would rather earn 1% off 100 people's efforts than 100% off my own efforts." - John D. Rockefeller

Rockefeller “The most important thing for a young man is to establish a credit — a reputation,

John D. Rockefeller was the Protestant work ethic in its purest form, leading a life so consistent with Weber’s classic essay that it reads like his spiritual biography.

Rockefeller prevailed at Standard Oil because he had mastered a method for solving problems that carried him far beyond his native endowment. He believed there was a time to think and then a time to act. He brooded over problems and quietly matured plans over extended periods. Once he had made up his mind, however, he was no longer troubled by doubts and pursued his vision with undeviating faith. Unfortunately, once in that state of mind, he was all but deaf to criticism. He was like a projectile that, once launched, could never be stopped, never recalled, never diverted.

Ci sono persone che sognano il successo e altre che restano sveglie per ottenerlo.

The younger partner, John D. Rockefeller, was barely twenty years old. Seeking independence, he had just left his position at Hewitt & Tuttle, a small firm that sold wholesale produce on behalf of farmers. Rockefeller had started there as an apprentice bookkeeper four years earlier. Beginning with $4,000 in capital—Rockefeller’s $2,000 coming half from his savings and half from a loan from his father—the firm took produce on consignment from farmers and sold it to wholesalers and other large buyers. Cleveland, being strategically positioned on Lake Erie, was an efficient point from which to get produce to New York City via Buffalo and the Erie Canal. The market for food and provisions was influenced by one especially large and consistent customer: the Union Army. The timing was good. Clark & Rockefeller thrived during the war.

Deep Simplicity: Bringing Order to Chaos and Complexity John Gribbin, Random House (2005) F.F.I.A.S.C.O.: The Inside Story of a Wall Street Trader Frank Partnoy, Penguin Books (1999) Ice Age John & Mary Gribbin, Barnes & Noble (2002) How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World & Everything in It Arthur Herman, Three Rivers Press (2002) Models of My Life Herbert A. Simon The MIT Press (1996) A Matter of Degrees: What Temperature Reveals About the Past and Future of Our Species, Planet, and Universe Gino Segre, Viking Books (2002) Andrew Carnegie Joseph Frazier Wall, Oxford University Press (1970) Guns Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies Jared M. Diamond, W. W. Norton & Company The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal Jared Nt[. Diamond, Perennial (1992) Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion Robert B. Cialdini, Perennial Currents (1998) The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin Benjamin franklin, Yale Nota Bene (2003) Living Within Limits: Ecology, Economics, and Population Taboos Garrett Hardin, Oxford University Press (1995) The Selfish Gene Richard Dawkins, Oxford University Press (1990) Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller Sr. Ron Chernow, Vintage (2004) The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor David Sandes, W. W Norton & Company (1998) The Warren Buffett Portfolio: Mastering the Power of the Focus Investment Strategist Robert G. Hagstrom, Wiley (2000) Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters Matt Ridley, Harper Collins Publishers (2000) Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giz.ting In Roger Fisher, William, and Bruce Patton, Penguin Books Three Scientists and Their Gods: Looking for Meaning in an Age of Information Robert Wright, Harper Collins Publishers (1989) Only the Paranoid Survive Andy Grove, Currency (1996 And a few from your editor... Les Schwab: Pride in Performance Les Schwab, Pacific Northwest Books (1986) Men and Rubber: The Story of Business Harvey S. Firestone, Kessinger Publishing (2003) Men to Match My Mountains: The Opening of the Far West, 1840-1900 Irving Stone, Book Sales (2001)

Many famous motivational speakers and influencers will tell you that you can get whatever you want in life but I will never tell you that. Do you know who else would not say that? Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller. But people love to be lied to and love entertaining fantasies, so they say I'm the one who doesn't know enough and that's why my thinking is limited. Well, have they tried to sell anything on a Chinese website or through an American or Canadian platform like Shopify? Many even tell me they plan to start their business using WordPress, which shows how ignorant they are of what their dreams need to become true. In reality, as soon as you start going through these paths you will see that you are stopped along the way. Many apps don't work in your country, and many markets are also not open to you due to location. In other cases, they claim to investigate you before deciding if you should have access to their features, while what they do is to simply look at your IP address. This happens to any industry, including the book industry.

At the twentieth century’s dawn, Rockefeller’s sanguinary maneuvering—including bribery, price-fixing, corporate espionage, and creating shell companies to conduct illegal activities—had won his Standard Oil Company control of 90 percent of US oil production and made him the richest man in world history with a net worth of over half a trillion in today’s dollars. Senator Robert Lafayette excoriated Rockefeller as “the greatest criminal of the age.”39 The oil magnate’s father, William “Devil Bill” Rockefeller, was a marauding con artist who supported his family by posing as a doctor and hawking snake oil, opium elixirs, patent medicines, and other miracle cures.40 In the early 1900s, as scientists discovered pharmaceutical uses for refinery by-products, John D. saw an opportunity to capitalize on the family’s medical pedigree. At that time, nearly half the physicians and medical colleges in the United States practiced holistic or herbal medicine. Rockefeller and his friend Andrew Carnegie, the Big Steel robber baron, dispatched educator Abraham Flexner on a cross-country tour to catalog the status of America’s 155 medical colleges and hospitals.