Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) was a Scottish-born American steel magnate and philanthropist. He built up a fortune in the steel industry, became one of the richest men in the world, and dedicated his wealth to charitable purposes—particularly libraries, education, and the arts.
Born in Dunfermline, Scotland, Carnegie grew up in Scotland and migrated to America in 1848. He taught himself using library books, became a telegraph operator, and then secretary of a Pennsylvania Railroad executive. He soon became Pennsylvania Railroad’s vice president, then an investor, and gradually built a steel empire by manufacturing steel rails for America’s burgeoning railroad industry.
At the height of his career, in 1901, after selling the Carnegie Steel Company to financier J. P. Morgan for 250 million dollars ($7 Billion in 2017,) Carnegie decided to retire and devote himself to giving his wealth all away. He later gave money to create more than 2,500 “free to the people” libraries all over the United States and in Britain.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Andrew Carnegie
Do your duty and a little more and the future will take care of itself.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Future
Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Teamwork, Teams
My supply of Scotch caution never has been small; but I was apparently something of a daredevil now and then to the manufacturing fathers of Pittsburgh. They were old and I was young, which made all the difference.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Youth
The man who acquires the ability to take full possession of his own mind may take possession of anything else to which he is justly entitled.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Self Confidence, Confidence, Mind, The Mind
I believe that the true road to preeminent success in any line is to make yourself master of that line.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Strength, Success
Let us pity and forgive those who urge increased armaments, for “they know not what they do.”
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: War
No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it.
—Andrew Carnegie
Nothing tells in the long run like a good judgment, and no sound judgment can remain with the man whose mind is disturbed by the mercurial changes of the stock exchange. It places him under an influence akin to intoxication. What is not, he sees, and what he sees, is not.
—Andrew Carnegie
No man becomes rich unless he enriches others.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Rich, Become
The problem of our age is the proper administration of wealth, so that the ties of brotherhood may still bind together the rich and poor in harmonious relationship.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Wealth
Immense power is acquired by assuring yourself in your secret reveries that you were born to control affairs.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Assurance, Confidence, Positive Attitudes, Optimism, Power
What one does easily, one does well.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Doing
The paper which obtains a reputation for publishing authentic news and only that which is fit to print, … will steadily increase its influence.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Journalism
All honor’s wounds are self-inflicted.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Perspective, Honor
The surest foundation of a manufacturing concern is quality. After that, and a long way after, comes cost.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Quality
The price which society pays for the law of competition, like the price it pays for cheap comforts and luxuries, is great; but the advantages of this law are also greater still than its cost—for it is to this law that we owe our wonderful material development, which brings improved conditions in its train. But, whether the law be benign or not, we must say of it: It is here; we cannot evade it; no substitutes for it have been found; and while the law may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Competition
In bestowing charity, the main consideration: should be to help those who will help themselves; to provide part of the means by which those who desire to improve may do so; to give those who desire to rise the aids by which they may rise; to assist, but rarely or never to do all. Neither the individual nor the race is improved by almsgiving. Those worthy of assistance, except in rare cases, seldom require assistance. The really valuable men of the race never do, except in case of accident or sudden change. Every one has, of course, cases of individuals brought to his own knowledge where temporary assistance can do genuine good, and these he will not overlook. But the amount which can be wisely given by the individual for individuals is necessarily limited by his lack of knowledge of the circumstances connected with each. He is the only true reformer who is as care ful and as anxious not to aid the unworthy as he is to aid the worthy, and, perhaps, even more so, for in almsgiving more injury is probably done by rewarding vice than by relieving virtue.
The rich man is thus almost restricted to following the examples of…others, who know that the best means of benefiting the community is to place within its reach the ladders upon which the aspiring can rise: free libraries, parks, and means of recreation, by which men are helped in body and mind; works of art, certain to give pleasure and improve the public taste; and public institutions of various kinds, which will improve the general condition of the people; in this manner returning their surplus wealth to the mass of their fellows in the forms best calculated to do them lasting good.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Charity
I have never known a concern to make a decided success that did not do good, honest work, and even in these days of fiercest competition, when everything would seem to be a matter of price, there lies still at the root of great business success the very much more important factor of quality. The effect of attention to quality, upon every man in the service, from the president of the concern down to the humblest laborer, cannot be overestimated.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Quality
Aim for the highest.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Vision
One of the serious obstacles to the improvement of our race is indiscriminate charity.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Charity
As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Doing, Action, Attention
Think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success. A whole, clear, glorious life lies before you. Achieve! Achieve!
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Vision, Achievement, Achieve, Business, Life, Achievements, Success
The first man gets the oyster, the second man gets the shell.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Life, Winners, Winning
It marks a big step in a man’s development when he comes to realize that other men can be called in to help him do a better job than he can do alone.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Work
I can’t afford to pay them any other way.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Money
The secret of happiness is renunciation.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Happiness
Upon the sacredness of property civilization itself depends – the right of the laborer to his hundred dollars in the savings bank, and equally the legal right of the millionaire to his millions.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Property
Concentration is my motto—first honesty, then industry, then concentration.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Study, Concentration, Work
Look out for the boy who has to plunge into work direct from the common school and who begins by sweeping out the office. He is probably the dark horse you had better watch.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Education
The day is not far distant when the man who dies leaving behind him millions of available wealth, which was free for him to administer during life, will pass away “unwept, unhonored, and unsung,” no matter to what uses he leave the dross which he cannot take with him. Of such as these the public verdict will then be: “The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.” Such, in my opinion, is the true gospel concerning wealth, obedience to which is destined some day to solve the problem of the rich and the poor.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Wealth
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