People From New York State

"My two hours' study of Mr. Rockefeller aroused a feeling I had not expected, which time has intensified. I was sorry for him. I know no companion so terrible as fear. Mr. Rockefeller, for all the conscious power written in face and voice and figure, was afraid, I told myself, afraid of his own kind. My friend Lewis Emery, Jr., priding himself on being a victim, was free and happy. Not gold enough in the world to tempt him to exchange his love of defiance for a power which carried with it a head as uneasy as that on Mr. Rockefeller's shoulders."

"When he rose to speak, the impression of power that the first look at him had given increased, and the impression of age passed. I expected a quavering voice, but the voice was not even old, if a little fatigued, a little thin. It was clear and utterly sincere. He meant what he was saying. He was on his own ground talking about dividends, dividends of righteousness. "If you would take something out," he said, clenching the hand of his outstretched right arm, "you must put something in"-emphasizing "put something in" with a long outstretched forefinger."

"Each generation repeats its leaders. Each sees men endowed with superior inventiveness, energy, and genius for business, inspired by love of power and possession, launch selfish schemes – Carnegies, Rockefellers, Goulds... Each generation has had its Henry George, its Bellamy, its Bryan, intent on persuading mankind that he had found the way, could lead men to the good life. In each generation employer and employee have faced the decision-war or cooperation."

"What J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller were to the Age of Robber Barons, Microsoft's Bill Gates and Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffett, as well as digital moguls like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos are to the contemporary age of the rule of the 1%. Then as now, the super-rich used governments to write laws and rules to allow them to accumulate unlimited wealth; then as now, creating monopolies by enclosing the commons and killing competition is the strategy for becoming the 1%."

"It is a common myth within capitalist thought that the individual through drive and hard work can become a capitalist. In the U.S.A., it is usual to refer to an individual like John D. Rockefeller, Sr., as someone who rose "from rags to riches." To complete the moral of the Rockefeller success story, it would be necessary to fill in the details on all the millions of people who had to be exploited in order for one man to become a multimillionaire. The acquisition of wealth is not due to hard work alone, or the Africans working as slaves in America and the West Indies would have been the wealthiest group in the world. The individualism of the capitalist must be seen against the hard and unrewarded work of the masses."

"My mother and father raised but one question: Is it right, is it duty?"

"I took responsibility early and, like my parents, I was serious."

"Of course John D. Rockefeller does not realize the fact, but it is true nevertheless that the Hookworm Commission he is supporting in the South is doing more for the revolutionary awakening in Dixie than anything else."

"I despise the rule of Rockefeller and Morgan as much as that of King or Kaiser, and am as outraged by Ludlow and Calumet as by Belgium."

"Even the Rockefeller family, which made its vast fortune on oil, has begun divesting from fossil fuel companies. Stephen Heintz, an heir of Standard Oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, said, "We are quite convinced that if he were alive today, as an astute businessman looking out to the future, he would be moving out of fossil fuels and investing in clean, renewable energy.""

"If you could get along without King George, you can get along without King John Rockefeller. Political liberty without economic freedom is a myth. Political liberty is rooted in economic freedom. The man who controls and owns the means that sustain my life, owns and controls me."

"Competition was natural enough at one time, but do you think you are competing today? Many of you think you are. Against whom? Against Rockefeller? About as I would if I had a wheelbarrow and competed with the Santa Fe from here to Kansas City."

"The only question with wealth is, what do you do with it?"

"Don't be afraid to give up the good to go for the great"

"I don't want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers."

"Good management consists of showing average people how to do the work of superior people."

"I have ways of making money that you know nothing of."

"The day of combination is here to stay. Individualism has gone, never to return."

"I would rather hire a man with enthusiasm, than a man who knows everything."

"Try to turn every disaster into an opportunity."

"The ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee, and I will pay more for that ability than for any other under the sun."

"I believe the power to make money is a gift of God … to be developed and used to the best of our ability for the good of mankind. Having been endowed with the gift I possess, I believe it is my duty to make money and still more money and to use the money I make for the good of my fellow man according to the dictates of my conscience."

"I believe it is a religious duty to get all the money you can, fairly and honestly; to keep all you can, and to give away all you can."

"I was early taught to work as well as play, My life has been one long, happy holiday; Full of work and full of play — I dropped the worry on the way — And God was good to me every day."

"The most important thing for a young man is to establish a credit — a reputation, character."

"God gave me my money."

"Do you know the only thing that gives me pleasure? It's to see my dividends coming in."

"I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all the hours of the waking day to the making of money for money's sake."

"It is wrong to assume that men of immense wealth are always happy."

"I do not think that there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature."

"“We must ever remember we are refining oil for the poor man and he must have it cheap and good.”"

"The impression was gaining ground with me that it was a good thing to let the money be my slave and not make myself a slave to money."

"The way to make money is to buy when blood is running in the streets."

"If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths, rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success."

"When an idealist is 20 he thinks he can make a real difference in the world. At 30 he still thinks so but realizes that a great many people stand in the way. At 40 he realizes that they will never get out of the way. Part of maturity is to accept the fact that we cannot change the world; the world is hell-bent in another direction and not interested in what we have to say or offer. Maturity does not mean giving up your ideals or giving up the fight, but it does mean giving up your illusions--being "dis-illusioned", seeing things as they really are, not "if only"."

"I have always heard in the music what I am finding out from the books: the man was a tyrant who beat his musicians with insults and temper tantrums. He never smiled when conducting (not even in rehearsals!) never thanked or complimented his men, never made them feel they were valuable partners or had even done a creditable job. He would fail to give them cues, then blame them with curses and insults for needing them! Besides being a compulsive perfectionist, he was childish, petulant, inconsiderate, monomaniacal, and monstrously self-centered. His technique was fear, and I always heard that fear in his music...Reading about him - especially books by people who worked with him - strongly confirmed what I had felt in my bones""

"Who knows what the new century holds for music? I predict that we will bury most of the musical modernism of the 20th, with its need to shock and cause distress."

"Now we all know that new recordings carry Danger signs all over them. Danger: fantastic sound can subvert your judgement. Danger: artist’s names and reputations can affect the way we listen. Danger: a new recording has not had time to win you over—it may be unfair to compare it to one you have known for 20 years. [...] Danger: things that irritate now may endear themselves to us in time. Danger: there was only one Stokowski."

"It is much easier to prejudge than to judge. It saves a lot of work to write about all the intellectual baggage one brings to the work. It is harder, even somewhat daunting, to start from scratch with what one is actually hearing. Actually it is not easy at all to make judgements in this field without falling back on preconceived categories. Comparisons often come to the rescue. Stokowski’s Scheherazade is without question an extremely effective, almost magical, performance. If I’m reviewing that work I must know outstanding performances like Stokowski’s. And I must know why it’s outstanding—I must know it by listening to it, not merely by reputation. I must compare the newcomer to it to see if he manages to make as much of the music."

"A college education was for me life-changing. It gave me a life-long passion for reading and learning. It challenged my narrowness and parochialism-really forced open my mind. It deepened my commitment to culture in general and to the higher forms of pleasure. Thus it enriched my life-permanently-by confirming me in habits of mind that would benefit me all my life long. Anyone observing could have seen that happening to me (and my fellow students) at the time. A real education is life-changing. You don't go to classes during the week and get drunk in dance bars on the weekend. You discover a higher level of life and pleasure, and you start living it. If the education takes, you keep living it the rest of your life. [...] Education releases you for real joy in the midst of a culture that is abysmally cheap and shabby. The people around you pursue TV, sports, and shopping-- obey the commands of their masters to indulge themselves in every way and not to question the value of what they are fed by the media. But the educated man is critical and even self-critical: he THINKS about things-even things like pleasure. Mindless self-indulgence is no longer enough when you have learned to think."

"It's [Joni Mitchell's "A Case of You"] been one of my favorite songs for my entire life."

"I’ve always chosen all my own material; no one ever told me what to sing or how to sing it, but I’ve always been pressured intensely to use musicians outside of my band."

"I tell you, when we travel with our own band and we're on the road . . . Well, I can't even believe this is work."

"It's not so bad to live out of a suitcase. It's a really beautiful life ."

"I've listened to Jazz since I was born and always knew I'd be a Jazz singer!"

"It [Ella Fitzgerald's "Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas"] is the happiest Christmas album I've ever heard. That album totally changed the way I look at Christmas albums. I loved what a happy, festive album it truly was . . . it's the best [[music] to have playing when you have a Christmas celebration. I wanted my album to feel just like that."

"Jane Monheit is skyrocketing up the jazz charts. By next year, we won't be able to get her."

"Death glided by, shadowless, among the empties on the grass."

"Pynchon is … the only contemporary author whose novels can be compared to James Joyce's with a straight face. … Whatever meanings and complex messages may lie hidden in Pynchon's text can, for now, be left to develop subconsciously as the reader enjoys the more immediate rewards of the work of a consummate storyteller. Pynchon is one, and he never quite lets you forget that while this might be an epic story, it's an epic story told to wide-eyed children who are up past their bedtime."

"Thomas Pynchon is an enigma shrouded in a mystery veiled in anonymity. … He so shuns publicity that he doesn't allow his likeness to be used on book jackets. All known photographs of the man date to the early 1950s. … Some of his fans wonder if he really exists or might really be several people writing under a pseudonym. … He has proven himself willing to step out of the shadows from time to time — but on his own terms."