My hopes were high, and I looked every day for some change to take place. What it was to be I knew not, but that it would come I felt certain if I kept on. One day the chance came.

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

While the law [of competition] may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department. We accept and welcome, therefore, 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.

The best time to expand is when no one else dares to take risks

A library outranks any other one thing a community can do to benefit its people. It is a never failing spring in the desert.

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.

The sound rule in busi­ness is that you may give money freely when you have a sur­plus, but your name never-nei­ther as en­dorser nor as mem­ber of a cor­po­ra­tion with in­di­vid­ual li­a­bil­ity