Top 50 John D. Rockefeller Quotes About Life

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.

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

I always tried to turn every disaster into an opportunity.

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

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

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

I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure.

In my young manhood we had everything to do and nothing to do it with; we had to hew our own paths along new lines.

I am naturally an optimist, and when it comes to a statement of what our people will accomplish in the future, I am unable to express myself with sufficient enthusiasm.

We did our day’s work as we met it, looking forward to what we could see in the distance and keeping well up to our opportunities, but laying our foundations firmly.

Now a little success, soon you will fall down, soon you will be overthrown. Because you have got a start, you think you are quite a merchant; look out, or you will lose your head—go steady.

I was afraid I could not stand my prosperity, and tried to teach myself not to get puffed up with any foolish notions.

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 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.

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 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 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.

A man’s wealth must be determined by the relation of his desires and expenditures to his income. If he feels rich on ten dollars, and has everything else he desires, he really is rich.

I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all the waking hours of the day to making money for money’s sake.

Giving is the secret of a healthy life. Not necessarily money, but whatever a person has of encouragement, sympathy and understanding.

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

The best philanthropy is constantly in search of the finalities—a search for a cause, an attempt to cure evils at their source.

I believe the power to make money is a gift from God.

I charted my course by figures, nothing but figures.

As I began my business life as a bookkeeper, I learned to have great respect for figures and facts, no matter how small they were.

Many of the brightest kept their books in such a way that they did not actually know when they were making money on a certain operation and when they were losing.

Real efficiency in work comes from knowing your facts and building upon that sure foundation.

From early boyhood I kept a little book which I remember I called Ledger A… containing my receipts and expenditures as well as an account of the small sums that I was taught to give away regularly.

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

Good old-fashioned common sense has always been a mighty rare commodity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Success comes from keeping the ears open and the mouth closed.

It was a friendship founded on business, which Mr. Flagler used to say was a good deal better than a business founded on friendship, and my experience leads me to agree with him.

Nothing so surely transforms a friend to an enemy as the suspicion that he is viewed and used as a sort of commercial convenience.

A friend of whatever kind is important; and this one learns as one grows older.

It is not merely capital and “plants” and the strictly material things which make up a business, but the character of the men behind these things, their personalities, and their abilities.

The Standard has not now, and never did have a royal road to supremacy, nor is its success due to any one man, but to the multitude of able men who are working together.

Much that one man cannot do alone two can do together.

It’s a pity to get a man into a place in an argument where he is defending a position instead of considering the evidence.

It has always been our policy to hear patiently and discuss frankly until the last shred of evidence is on the table, before trying to reach a conclusion and to decide finally upon a course of action.

To succeed in a business requires the best and most earnest men to manage it, and the best men rise to the top.

If there is any better function of business management than giving profitable work to employees year after year, in good times and bad, I don’t know what it is.

For myself, I had decided to say nothing, hoping that after my death the truth would gradually come to the surface and posterity would do strict justice.