Andrew Carnegie Quotes

Three generations from shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves.

To be popular is easy; to be right when right is unpopular, is noble... I repudiate with scorn the immoral doctrine, 'Our country, right or wrong'.

A sunny disposition is worth more than fortune.
Young people should know that it can be cultivated; that the mind like the body can be moved from the shade into sunshine.

The Republic may not give wealth or happiness, she has not promised these. It is the freedom to pursue these, not their realization, we can claim.

No man will make a great business who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit of doing it. That spirit is fatal, and the sure proof of a small mind.

Every person who can, even at a sacrifice, make the voyage around the world should do so. All other travel compared to it seems incomplete, gives us merely vague impressions of parts of the whole.

gradually withdrew from all such enterprises and made up my mind to go entirely contrary to the adage not to put all one’s eggs in one basket. I determined that the proper policy was “to put all good eggs in one basket and then watch that basket.

"A forgiving God would be the noblest work of man." We accepted as proven that each stage of civilization creates its own God, and that as man ascends and becomes better his conception of the Unknown likewise improves. Thereafter we all became less theological, but I am sure more truly religious.

"It was from my uncle I learned all that I know of the early history of Scotland — of Wallace and Bruce and Burns, of Blind Harry's history, of Scott, Ramsey, Tannahill, Hogg, and Fergusson. I can truly say in the words of Burns that there was then and there created in me a vein of Scottish prejudice (or patriotism) which will cease to exist only with life. Wallace, of course, was our hero. Everything heroic centered in him. Sad was the day when a wicked big boy at school told me that England was far larger than Scotland. I went to the uncle, who had the remedy.
"Not at all, Naig; if Scotland were rolled out flat as England, Scotland would be the larger, but would you have the Highlands rolled down?"
Oh, never! There was balm in Gilead for the wounded young patriot. Later the greater population of England was forced upon me, and again to the uncle I went.
"Yes, Naig, seven to one, but there were more than that odds against us at Bannockburn." And again there was joy in my heart — joy that there were more English men there since the glory was the greater."

"In the days of slavery and the underground railroads, there lived on the banks of the Ohio River near Gallipolis, a noted Democrat named Judge French, who said to some anti-slavery friends that he should like them to bring to his office the first runaway negro that crossed the river, bound northward by the underground. He couldn't understand why they wished to run away. This was done, and the following conversation took place:
Judge: "So you have run away from Kentucky. Bad master, I suppose?"
Slave: "Oh, no, Judge; very good, kind massa."
Judge: "He worked you too hard?"
Slave: "No, sah, never overworked myself all my life."
Judge, hesitatingly: "He did not give you enough to eat?"
Slave: "Not enough to eat down in Kaintuck? Oh, Lor', plenty to eat."
Judge: "He did not clothe you well?"
Slave: "Good enough clothes for me, Judge."
Judge: "You hadn't a comfortable home?"
Slave: "Oh, Lor', makes me cry to think of my pretty little cabin down dar in old Kaintuck."
Judge, after a pause: "You had a good, kind master, you were not overworked, plenty to eat, good clothes, fine home. I don't see why the devil you wished to run away."
Slave: "Well, Judge, I lef de situation down dar open. You kin go rite down and git it."

The Judge had seen a great light."

True it is, we only hate those whom we do not know.

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

gradually withdrew from all such enterprises and made up my mind to go entirely contrary to the adage not to put all one’s eggs in one basket. I determined that the proper policy was to put all good eggs in one basket and then watch that basket

Pioneering don't pay.

It is all very well for you, gentlemen, who work one day in the week and are masters of your time the other six during which you can view the beauties of Nature all very well for you- but I think it shameful that you should endeavor to shut out from the toiling masses of that is calculated to entertain and instruct them during the only day which you well know they have at their disposal.