Quotes About Business

Unable to compromise on business principles, Rockefeller chose to jeopardize family relations instead.

He was a man who always acted on Flagler's business motto of favoring "sharp, vigorous and decisive measures.

He preferred compromise to antitrust cases, which were slow, time-consuming, and fiendishly difficult to win.

Pierpont was already urging him to cut back his schedule.

Indeed, had he not possessed some charm, or at least cordiality, he could never have accomplished so much in the business world.

For Rockefeller, Rice was nothing but a blackmailer.

In exchange for this extraordinary concession, Rockefeller and Flagler didn't simply try to squeeze the railroads—they were much too shrewd and subtle for that—but offered compelling incentives.

Rockefeller was still held responsible for the sins of Standard Oil

Articles began to appear with titles like "The Human Side of John D. Rockefeller," as if its existence wasn't taken for granted.

Pierpont began to emerge from his father's shadow and take charge of major deals.

He also saw competition as a destructive, inefficient force and instinctively favored large-scale combination as the cure.

For all his success in bottling up pipeline bills, Rockefeller couldn't scotch the Tidewater.

One biographer has gone so far as to say of Rockefeller, "He was the best employer of his time, instituting hospitalization and retirement pensions.

John labored tirelessly to win control of Pioneer Oil Works and, instead of snuffing it out, favored its discreet absorption by Standard Oil.

Commodore Vanderbilt's death was a pivotal moment in the shift of business from family to public ownership—a transition rich in possibilities for Pierpont Morgan.

Gates fixed Rockefeller with a steady, quizzical look.

Pierpont feared a replication of the railroad chaos, with overbuilding and price wars.

Rockefeller was embraced no less warmly by the New York Central, which was controlled by the Vanderbilt family.

Both Jefferson and Adams detested people who earned a living shuffling financial paper, and when Adams launched a bitter tirade in later years against the iniquitous banking system, Jefferson agreed that the business was "an infinity of successive felonious larcenies." 9 That banks could serve any economic purpose—that they could generate prosperity that might enrich the few but also lubricate the wheels of commerce—seemed alien to both men.

Forced to reconsider, Rockefeller evidently came up with a large enough bonus, although Gates never revealed the exact amount.

Yet financial differences quickly soured his relations with Morgan.

Gates was always mystified by Morgan's success.

U.S. Steel had pushed Frank Kellogg to target Standard Oil so as to deflect heat from itself.

Though he owned 27.4 percent of Standard Oil stock—three times the amount held by Flagler, the next largest shareholder