Top 90 John D. Rockefeller Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Be sure that you are not deceiving yourself at any time about actual conditions.”

— John D. Rockefeller

52. “The best business in the world is a well run oil company. The second best business in the world is a badly run oil company.”

— John D. Rockefeller

53. “Never think you need to apologize for asking someone to give to a worthy cause, any more than as though you were giving him or her an opportunity to participate in a high-grade investment. The duty of giving is as much his or hers as is the duty of asking yours.”

— John D. Rockefeller

54. “I have no use for men who fail. The cause of their failure is no business of mine, but I want successful men as my associates.”

— John D. Rockefeller

55. “I was trained from the beginning to work, to save. I have always regarded it a as a religious duty to get all I could honorably and to give all I could.”

— John D. Rockefeller

56. “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.”

— John D. Rockefeller

57. “I believe that thrift is essential to well-ordered living.”

— John D. Rockefeller

58. “A man’s wealth must be determined by the relation of his desires and expenditures to his income. If he feels rich on ten dollars, and has everything else he desires, he really is rich.”

— John D. Rockefeller

59. “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.”

— John D. Rockefeller

60. “The success of each is dependent upon the success of the other.”

— John D. Rockefeller

61. “It is wrong to assume that men of immense wealth are always happy.”

— John D. Rockefeller

62. “The poorest man I know is the man who has nothing but money.”

— John D. Rockefeller

63. “I was trained from the beginning to work, to save, and to give.”

— John D. Rockefeller

64. “The task is simple. We will organize children and teach them in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way.”

— John D. Rockefeller

65. “Long ago I lost the joy in living. The only joy I have is in my giving.”

— John D. Rockefeller

66. “Our cup will truly run over only after we have sealed the character cracks.”

— John D. Rockefeller

67. “When a man has accumulated a sum of money, accumulated it within the law, the Government has no right to share in its earnings.”

— John D. Rockefeller

68. “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.”

— John D. Rockefeller

69. “And we are never too old to study the Bible. Each time the lessons are studied comes some new meaning, some new thought which will make us better.”

— John D. Rockefeller

70. “We can never learn too much of His will towards us, too much of His messages and His advice. The Bible is His word and its study gives at once the foundation for our faith and an inspiration to battle onward in the fight against the tempter.”

— John D. Rockefeller

71. “To think! All that power and he wasn’t even rich!”

— John D. Rockefeller

72. “Money is a way of keeping COUNT on how well you’re doing in business.”

— John D. Rockefeller

73. “I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure.”

— John D. Rockefeller

74. “It has always been my rule in business to make everything count.”

— John D. Rockefeller

75. “The American Beauty Rose can be produced in the splendor and fragrance which bring cheer to its beholder only by sacrificing the early buds which grow up around it. This is not an evil tendency in business. It is merely the working-out of a law of nature and a law of God.”

— John D. Rockefeller

76. “I have long been profoundly convinced that in the very nature of things, employers and employees are partners, not enemies; that their interests are common not opposed; that in the long run the success of each is dependent upon the success of the other.”

— John D. Rockefeller

77. “When work goes out of style we may expect to see civilization totter and fall.”

— John D. Rockefeller

78. “My mother was given to a typical question: “We have always done this. Why should we do anything else?” But my wife’s typical question was “We have always done this. Why don’t we do it another way or, better still, why not do something else?””

— John D. Rockefeller

79. “It is very important to remember what other people tell you, not so much what you yourself already know.”

— John D. Rockefeller

80. “The day of combination is here to stay. Individualism has gone, never to return.”

— John D. Rockefeller

81. “Don’t blame the marketing department. The buck stops with the chief executive.”

— John D. Rockefeller

82. “You know that great prejudice exists against all successful business enterprise – the more successful, the greater the prejudice.”

— John D. Rockefeller

83. “After it is all over, the religion of man is his most important possession.”

— John D. Rockefeller

84. “I was born into it and there was nothing I could do about it. It was there, like air or food, or any other element. The only question with wealth is what you do with it.”

— John D. Rockefeller

85. “Often-times the most difficult competition comes, not from the strong, the intelligent, the conservative competitor, but from the man who is holding on by the eyelids and is ignorant of his costs, and anyway he’s got to keep running or bust!”

— John D. Rockefeller

86. “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.”

— John D. Rockefeller

87. “I shall use such influence as I have in emphasizing the basic truths common to all denominations, in lowering denominational barriers and in promoting effective cooperation among Christians of whatever creed.”

— John D. Rockefeller

88. “I should say in general the advantage of education is to better fit a man for life’s work. I would advise young men to take a college course, as a rule, but think some are just as well off with a thorough business training.”

— John D. Rockefeller

89. “Let the good work go on. We must ever remember we are refining oil for the poor man and he must have it cheap and good.”

— John D. Rockefeller

90. “If my name were John D Smith IV I wouldn’t have been elected to anything.”

— John D. Rockefeller

91. “Taxation has its limitations as a method of achieving better economic distribution since for this purpose it is essentially remedial. We must also take a positive approach by finding new ways to spread ownership of future capital growth more broadly in our society.”

— John D. Rockefeller

92. “We are coming to see that there should be no stifling of labor by capital, or of capital by labor; and also that there should be no stifling of labor by labor, or of capital by capital.”

— John D. Rockefeller

93. “Go as far as you can see; when you get there, you’ll be able to see farther.”

— John D. Rockefeller

94. “It is one thing to stand on the comfortable ground of placid inaction and put forth words of cynical wisdom, and another to plunge into the work itself and through strenuous experience earn the right to express strong conclusions.”

— John D. Rockefeller

95. “Don’t waste effort on a thing that ends in a petty triumph unless you are happy with a life of petty success.”

— John D. Rockefeller