In my own house I rigged up a laboratory and studied chemistry in the evenings, determined that there should be nothing in the manufacture of steel that I would not know. Although I had received no technical education I made myself master of chemistry and of the laboratory, which proved of lasting value.

You can tell a workingman you like him, but he knows whether you are sincere or not. You can't make him believe you are interested in his welfare unless you are.

American industry is spilling over with men who started life even with the leaders, with brains just as big, with hands quite as capable. And yet one man emerges from the mass, rises sheer about his fellows; and the rest remain.

I thought and dreamed of nothing else but the steel works.

If you must be a glutton, be a glutton for work.

The thing that most people call 'genius' I do not believe in.

I have always felt that the surest way to qualify for the job just ahead is to work a little harder than any one else on the job one is holding down.