I demand riches in definite terms; I have a definite plan for acquiring riches;I am engaged in carrying out my plan, and I am giving an equivalent,in useful service, of the value of those riches I demand.

I began to learn what poverty meant. It was burnt in my heart then that my father had to beg for work and there came the resolve that I would cure that when I got to be a man.

Those who would administer [charity] wisely must, indeed, be wise, for one of the serious obstacles to the improvement of our race is indiscriminate charity. It were better for mankind that the millions of the rich were thrown into the sea than spent to encourage the slothful, the drunken, the unworthy. Of every thousand dollars spent in so-called charity today, it is probable that nine hundred and fifty dollars is unwisely spent - so spent, indeed, as to produce the very evils which it hopes to mitigate or cure.

The secret of happiness is renunciation.

Show me a man of average ability but extraordinary desire and I'll show you a winner every time.

In [my] life ... I did not understand steam machinery, but I tried to understand that much more complicated piece of mechanism - man.

The greatest astonishment of my life was the discovery that the man who does the work is not the man who gets rich