Quotes About Fortune

It is the child of avarice, the brother of inequity, and father of mischief. It has been the ruin of many worthy families, the loss of many a man's honor, and the cause of suicide. To all those who enter the list, it is equally fascinating. The successful gamester pushes his good fortune till it is overtaken by a reverse. The losing gamester, in hopes of retrieving past misfortunes, goes on from bad to worse."37 Washington

Rockefeller seemed destined to succeed as much from his fastidious work habits as from innate intelligence.

about a billion dollars in tax-free income per annum in today's money.

The main thing was to prove that you were not taking your good fortune for granted.

In time, the government redefined the rules of the capitalist game to tame trusts and preserve competition, but as John D. Rockefeller set about building his fortune, the absence of clear-cut rules probably aided, at first, the creative vigor of the new industrial economy.

Like Twain, Walt Whitman was mesmerized by Grant and grouped him with George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the quartet of greatest Americans. "In all Homer and Shakespeare there is no fortune or personality really more picturesque or rapidly changing, more full of heroism, pathos, contrast," he wrote.

By an exquisite (and, for Bill, surely excruciating) irony, this scheming, selfish, money-mad charlatan turned his back on his family just as his eldest son began to amass the largest fortune in history.

Mr. Rockefeller may have made himself the richest man in the world, but he has paid.

Then it grew steadily clearer that Junior would be the receptacle for the bulk of the fortune.

Rockefeller was fortunate to have applied his money at the precise moment that medical research matured as a discipline and offered unbounded opportunities.

Perhaps he did not think Junior could live with the moral ambiguities of a fortune extracted by dubious methods.

My greatest fortune in life has been my son.

Understandably, the Rockefellers did not wish to broadcast their misfortunes to the world.

It proved to be the luckiest stroke of his career.

Precisely because he lost the antitrust suit, Rockefeller was converted from a mere millionaire, with an estimated net worth of $300 million in 1911, into something just short of history's first billionaire.

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.

He made them all wealthy beyond their dreams.

Rockefeller now left Andrew Carnegie far behind and probably had at least twice as much money as Carnegie did.

The sudden wealth of young businessmen such as Rockefeller fed envy among returning soldiers, who wished to emulate their good fortune.

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.

It is revealing that Morgan didn't leap at the fortune but responded with cool self-control.

but as John D. Rockefeller set about building his fortune, the absence of clear-cut rules probably aided, at first, the creative vigor of the new industrial economy.

Thanks to Washington and Hamilton, the American economy flourished; thanks to Adams, the Quasi-War with France had receded to a memory. Inheriting domestic prosperity and international peace, Jefferson benefited from exceptional good fortune as America settled down for the first time since the Revolution.

If roomy and comfortable, it was extremely modest for someone of Rockefeller's wealth and, like his Cleveland residence, subtly masked the size of his fortune.