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
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: The Mind, Mind, Self Confidence, Confidence
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 first man gets the oyster, the second man gets the shell.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Winners, Winning, Life
Concentration is my motto—first honesty, then industry, then concentration.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Study, Work, Concentration
Do your duty and a little more and the future will take care of itself.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Future
The average person puts only 25% of his energy and ability into his work. The world takes off its hat to those who put in more than 50% of their capacity, and stands on its head for those few and far between souls who devote 100%.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Energy, Action, Work
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
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
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
Aim for the highest.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Vision
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
The secret of happines is renunciation.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Happiness
The surest foundation of a manufacturing concern is quality. After that, and a long way after, comes cost.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Quality
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
Think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success. A whole, clear, glorious life lies before you. Achieve! Achieve!
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Achievement, Success, Achievements, Business, Vision, Achieve, Life
You can’t push anyone up the ladder unless he is ready to climb himself.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Preparation, Planning
Immense power is acquired by assuring yourself in your secret reveries that you were born to control affairs.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Assurance, Confidence, Power, Optimism, Positive Attitudes
There is no use whatever trying to help people who do not help themselves. You cannot push anyone up a ladder unless he be willing to climb himself.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Helping, Progress, Self-improvement
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
I would as soon leave my son a curse as the almighty dollar.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Inheritance
No amount of ability is of the slightest avail without honor.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Character, Ability, Honor
Public sentiment will come to be, that the man who dies rich dies disgraced.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Philanthropy, Riches
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
No man is a true gentleman who does not inspire the affection and devotion of his servants.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Manners
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
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
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: Capitalism, Survival
As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Doing, Action, Attention
I believe that the true road to preeminent success in any line is to make yourself master of that line.
—Andrew Carnegie
Topics: Success, Strength
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Sheryl Sandberg American Executive, Author
- Henry M. Flagler American Financier
- Alexander Hamilton American Statesman
- George Westinghouse American Engineer
- Jane Addams American Social Reformer
- Maria Mitchell American Astronomer
- Victor Hugo French Novelist
- Philip H. Knight American Businessman
- J. P. Morgan American Financier, Philanthropist
- John D. Rockefeller American Industrialist, Philanthropist
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