John Davison Rockefeller (8 July 1839 – 23 May 1937) was an American business tycoon, industrialist, and book-keeper, most known for his role in the early petroleum-industry and the founding of Standard Oil. Measured in today's dollars, Rockefeller is the richest person in the history of mankind. He was also the first billionaire (in US dollars) in history.

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• 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.
  • Verses written on his eighty-sixth birthday (1925-07-08) http://www.anbhf.org/pdf/lee.pdf

Disputed

• I have ways of making money that you know nothing of.
  • Quoted by Isaac Hewitt (1879) in testimony to the New York Assembly. Rockefeller doubted that he said this, according to David Freeman Hawke (1980) John D..

Unsourced

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

• God gave me my wealth.
  • Quoted in Jules Abels (1965) The Rockefeller Billions

• It is wrong to assume that men of immense wealth are always happy.
  • "The Loneliness of John D. Rockefeller", Current Literature (November 1906) vol. 41 no. 5, attributed as a statement to his Bible class on 1 April 1905

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

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

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

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

• I don't want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers.
  • Attributed by Jim Marrs in the William Lewis film One Nation Under Siege.

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

• 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.

• I believe that thrift is essential to well-ordered living.

• I always tried to turn every disaster into an opportunity.

• Competition is a sin.

• The way to make money is to buy when blood is running in the streets
  • Attributed by The Fourth 637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said.

• Do you know the only thing that gives me pleasure? It's to see my dividends coming in.

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

• I believe it is my duty to make money and still more money and to use the money I make for the good of my fellow man according to the dictates of my conscience.
  • Attributed by Robert Heilbroner and Aaron Singer in The Economic Transformation of America. 1600 to Present. Wadsworth: Belmont (CA), 1999: 162.

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

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

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

• 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.

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

• With perseverance, anything and everything, whether right or wrong, good or bad, is achievable and can be conquered.

• The only question with wealth is, what do you do with it?