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
Public sentiment will come to be, that the man who dies rich dies disgraced.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Philanthropy, Riches
People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Thought, Knowledge, Motivation, People, Success, Kindness, Compassion, Life
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
Do your duty and a little more and the future will take care of itself.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Future
At the end, the acquisition of wealth is ignoble in the extreme. I assume that you save and long for wealth only as a means of enabling you the better to do some good in your day and generation.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Wealth
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
You can’t push anyone up the ladder unless he is ready to climb himself.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Planning, Preparation
It was from my own early experience that I decided there was no use to which money could be applied so productive of good to boys and girls who have good within them and ability and ambition to develop it as the founding of a public library.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Reading
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: Confidence, Self Confidence, Mind, The Mind
No man becomes rich unless he enriches others.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Rich, Become
The secret of happines is renunciation.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Happiness
I would as soon leave my son a curse as the almighty dollar.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Inheritance
Surplus wealth is a sacred trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Wealth
It is not the rich man’s son that the young struggler for advancement has to fear in the race for life, nor his nephew, nor his cousin. Let him look out for the dark horse in the boy who begins by sweeping out the office.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Improvement
One of the serious obstacles to the improvement of our race is indiscriminate charity.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Charity
The surest foundation of a manufacturing concern is quality. After that, and a long way after, comes cost.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Quality
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
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
A word, a look, an accent, may affect the destiny not only of individuals, but of nations. He is a bold man who calls anything a trifle.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Destiny
Immense power is acquired by assuring yourself in your secret reveries that you were born to control affairs.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Assurance, Power, Optimism, Positive Attitudes, Confidence
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
No amount of ability is of the slightest avail without honor.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Ability, Character, Honor
What one does easily, one does well.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Doing
Think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success. A whole, clear, glorious life lies before you. Achieve! Achieve!
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Life, Achievement, Business, Achieve, Achievements, Success, Vision
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
Concentration is my motto—first honesty, then industry, then concentration.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Work, Study, Concentration
I have had a long, long life full of troubles, but there is one curious fact about them—nine-tenths of them never happened.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Trouble
And while the law of ‘competition’ 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: Survival, Capitalism
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
We accept and welcome… as conditions to which we must accommodate ourselves, great inequality of environment; the concentration of business, industrial and commercial, in the hands of a few; and the law of competition between these, as being not only beneficial, but essential for the future progress of the race.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Equality
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
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
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
The thorough man of business knows that only by years of patient, unremitting attention to affairs can he earn his reward, which is the result, not of chance, but of well-devised means for the attainment to ends.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Achievements
All honor’s wounds are self-inflicted.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Honor, Perspective
The first man gets the oyster, the second man gets the shell.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Life, Winning, Winners
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
The men who have succeeded are men who have chosen one line and stuck to it.
—Andrew Carnegie
If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy and inspires your hopes.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Happy, Energy, Thoughts
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