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.

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

I resolved to stop accumulating and begin the infinitely more serious and difficult task of wise distribution.

Do your duty and a little more and the future will take care of itself.

Wealth is not to feed our egos but to feed the hungry and to help people help themselves.

What one does easily, one does well.

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 girls and boys who have good within them and ability and ambition to develop it as the founding of a public library.