Quotes About Business

Regulation did not inevitably harm business but could also aid it.

He inveighed bitterly against the growing power of the Jews and of the Rockefeller crowd, and said more than once that our firm and his were the only two composed of white men in New York.

One upshot was that on April 29, 1879, a grand jury in Clarion County, Pennsylvania, indicted nine Standard Oil officials—including Rockefeller, Flagler, O'Day, and Archbold—and charged them with conspiracy to monopolize the oil business, extort railroad rebates, and manipulate prices to cripple rivals.

Rockefeller followed Flagler's business adventures in Florida with sympathy but at a distance.

In choosing partners, Pierpont wouldn't tolerate a refusal.

Had he not been unfairly implicated, Rockefeller might have enjoyed the rebuke delivered to Rogers.

Rockefeller succeeded because he believed in the long-term prospects of the business and never treated it as a mirage that would soon fade.

the House of Morgan wasn't a multinational bank but an American bank with partnerships abroad.

Imagining that the companies would be quite lucrative, Washington had no qualms about businessmen booking large profits as long as their work served the public weal and provided a model for future government action.

Thanks to this staggering appreciation, Rockefeller's net worth reached a lifetime peak of $900 million in 1913—more than $13 billion in 1996 dollars.

To complicate matters, new refiners now entered the business expressly to blackmail him into buying them out.

I never felt the need of scientific knowledge, have never felt it. A young man who wants to succeed in business does not require chemistry or physics. He can always hire scientists.

The Clarks were the first of many business partners to underrate the audacity of the quietly calculating Rockefeller, who bided his time as he figured out how to get rid of them.

61 Pierpont's fortune didn't approach those of the great industrialists—Carnegie, Rockefeller, Ford, or Harriman—and he didn't quite edge out Jay Gould.

beneath the competitive veneer, the Rothschilds were eager to come to terms with Standard Oil:

With virtuosic brilliance, Rockefeller and Flagler played these three railroads against each other in seemingly endless permutations.

Rockefeller never passed up a chance to exploit a legitimate advantage against his beleaguered rivals.

No longer at the mercy of unpredictable economic forces, he thrived even in recessions.

Starting in the 1880s, he adopted a policy of never doing business with strangers or even meeting them, avoiding unwanted solicitations and controversy.

My change is five cents short," Rockefeller declared.

As Standard Oil's leading figure, he was the only person who didn't have any direct operational responsibility.

and I could not think of giving an answer until I have looked over the books of the firm and have some idea of the business and of the methods by which it is done.

Rockefeller had positioned himself exactly where he wished to be—poised to profit from either surplus or scarcity and all but immune to the vagaries of the marketplace.

When such remedies failed, Rockefeller decided to buy a wig.