Andrew Carnegie quotes encapsulate the wisdom of one of history’s most successful industrialists and philanthropists.
Rising from humble beginnings as a Scottish immigrant to becoming America’s wealthiest man, Carnegie’s words on success, wealth, and social responsibility continue to guide entrepreneurs and leaders today.
Whether you’re seeking motivation for your business journey or insights into the philosophy of giving, these carefully selected Andrew Carnegie quotes offer timeless lessons from a man who transformed industry and philanthropy in America.
Read Also: The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie: Book Review
Andrew Carnegie Quotes
- If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy, inspires your hopes.
2. No man becomes rich unless he enriches others.
3. There is no use whatsoever in trying to help people who do not help themselves.
4. The man who dies rich, dies disgraced.
5. Watch the costs and the profits will take care of themselves.
6. Ninety percent of all millionaires become so through owning real estate. More money has been made in real estate than in all industrial investments combined. The wise young man or wage earner of today invests his money in real estate.
7. Success is the power to acquire whatever one demands of life without violating the rights of others.
8. It marks a big step in your development when you come to realize that other people can help you do a better job than you could do alone.
9. Capitalism is about turning luxuries into necessities.
10. Surplus wealth is a sacred trust to be managed for the good of others.
11. Give me a man with an average ability but a burning desire to succeed and I will give you a winner in exchange every time.
12. Think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success. A whole, clear, glorious life lies before you. Achieve! Achieve!
13. The men who have succeeded are men who have chosen one line and stuck to it.
14. Strong men don’t compromise, it is said, and principles should never be compromised.
15. Success can be attained in any branch of labor. There’s always room at the top in every pursuit.
16. It is more difficult to give money away intelligently than to earn it in the first place.
17. When fate hands us a lemon, let’s try to make lemonade.
18. My hopes were high, and I looked every day for some change to take place. What it was to be I knew not, but that it would come I felt certain if I kept on. One day the chance came.
19. Every man gravitates to where he belongs in life, just as surely as water seeks and finds its level. His position is measured precisely by the quality and quantity of the service he renders, plus the mental attitude with which he relates himself to other people.
20. Concentrate your energy, your thoughts and your capital.
21. The man of business knows that only by years of patient, unremitting attention to affairs can he earn his reward, which is the result, not of chance, but of well-devised means for the attainment of ends.
22. Instead of the question “What must I do for my employer?” substitute “What can I do”
23. I believe that the road to pre-eminent success in any line of work is to make yourself master of that line of work.
24. I give money for church organs in the hope the organ music will distract the congregation’s attention from the rest of the service.
25. TEAMWORK: the fuel that allows common people attain uncommon results.
26. A sunny disposition is worth more than [a monetary] fortune. Young people should know that it can be cultivated; that the mind like the body can be moved from the shade into sunshine.
27. There is no way of making a business successful that can vie with the policy of promoting those who render exceptional service.
28. There is no class so pitiably wretched as that which possesses money and nothing else.
29. Here lies one who knew how to get around him men who were cleverer than himself.
30. A business is seldom if ever built up except on lines of strictest integrity.
31. No man can become rich without himself enriching others.
32. The average person puts only 25% of his energy and ability into his work.
33. Three generations from shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves.
34. Not evil, but good, has come to the race from the accumulation of wealth by those who have the ability and energy that produce it.
35. I began to learn what poverty meant. It was burnt in my heart then that my father had to beg for work and there came the resolve that I would cure that when I got to be a man.
36. He that cannot reason is a fool.
37. When I did big things, some large corporations like the Pennsylvania Railroad Company were behind me and responsible party.
38. There is nothing that robs a righteous cause of its strength more than a millionaire’s money.
39. That 95 per cent. fail of those who start in business upon their own account seems incredible, and yet such are said to be the statistics upon the subject.
40. The worlds civilization started from the day on which everyone received reward for labour.
41. Those who would administer wisely must, indeed, be wise, for one of the serious obstacles to the improvement of our race is indiscriminate charity.
42. The greatest astonishment of my life was the discovery that the man who does the work is not the man who gets rich.
43. The secret of success lies not in doing your own work, but in recognizing the right man to do it.
44. The best time to expand is when no one else dares to take risks.
45. There are two types of people who never achieve very much in their lifetimes. One is the person who won’t do what he or she is told to do, and the other is the person who does no more than he or she is told to do.
46. People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents.
47. You cannot push any one up a ladder unless he be willing to climb a little himself.
48. You develop millionaires the way you mine gold. You expect to move tons of dirt to find an ounce of gold, but you don’t go into the mine looking for the dirt-you go in looking for the gold.
49. Don’t be content with doing only your duty. Do more than your duty. It’s the horse that finishes a neck ahead that wins the race.
50. Do not look for approval except for the consciousness of doing your best.
51. Concentrate your energy, thought and capital exclusively upon the business in which you are engaged… ‘Don’t put all your eggs in one basket’ is all wrong. I tell you ‘put all your eggs in one basket, and then watch that basket.’
52. Any person can achieve greatness if they understand the philosophy of success and the steps required to achieve it.
53. Whatever I engage in, I must push inordinately.
54. I believe the true road to preeminent success in any line is to make yourself master in that line. I have no faith in the policy of scattering one’s resources, and in my experience I have rarely if ever met a man who achieved preeminence in money making.. certainly never one in manufacturing.. who was interested in many concerns.
55. It is trying to be other than one’s self that unmans one. Be your own natural self and go ahead.
56. The battle of life is already half won by the young man who is brought in contact with high officials; and the great aim of every boy should be to do something beyond the sphere of his duties- something which attracts the attention of those over him.
57. Strength is derived from unity. The range of our collective vision is far greater when individual insights become one.
58. Life is not so much a matter of position as of disposition.
59. There is scarcely an instance of a man who has made a fortune by speculation and kept it.
60. I don’t believe in God. My God is patriotism. Teach a man to be a good citizen and you have solved the problem of life.
61. I shall argue that strong men, conversely, know when to compromise and that all principles can be compromised to serve a greater principle.
62. The only irreplaceable capital an organization possesses is the knowledge and ability of its people. The productivity of that capital depends on how effectively people share their competence with those who can use it.
63. A man who was generous with his wealth. It has been reported that during his lifetime, Carnegie gave away over $350 million of his money to help others.
64. I resolved to stop accumulating and begin the infinitely more serious and difficult task of wise distribution.
65. Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision.
66. Ninety percent of all millionaires become so through owning real estate.
67. Golf is an indispensable adjunct to high civilisation.
68. Private Property, the Law of Accumulation of Wealth, and the Law of Competition… these are the highest results of human experience, the soil in which society so far has produced the best fruit.
69. The wise young man or wage earner of today invests his money in real estate.
70. There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the Free Public Library, this republic of letters, where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration.
71. Nothing tells in the long run like a good judgment, and no sound judgment can remain with the man whose mind is disturbed by the mercurial changes of the stock exchange. It places him under an influence akin to intoxication. What is not, he sees, and what he sees, is not.
72. Wealth is not to feed our egos but to feed the hungry and to help people help themselves.
73. Show me a man of average ability but extraordinary desire and I’ll show you a winner every time.
74. A man’s reading program should be as carefully planned as his daily diet, for that too is food, without which he cannot grow mentally.
75. One great cause of failure of young men in business is lack of concentration.
76. Immense power is acquired by assuring yourself in your secret reveries that you were born to control affairs.
77. No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit for doing it.
78. I spent the first half of my life making money and the second half of my life giving it away to do the most good and the least harm.
79. Touch his head, and he will bargain and argue with you to the last; Touch his heart, and he falls upon your breast.
80. Every act you have ever performed since the day you were born was performed because you wanted something.
81. Do your duty and a little more and the future will take care of itself.
82. The day is not far distant when the man who dies leaving behind him millions of available wealth, which was free for him to administer during life, will pass away unwept, unhonored, and unsung, no matter to what uses he leave the dross which he cannot take with him. Of such as these the public verdict will then be: The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced. Such, in my opinion, is the true gospel concerning wealth, obedience to which is destined some day to solve the problem of the rich and the poor.
83. I have had a long, long life full of troubles, but there is one curious fact about them-nine-tenths of them never happened.
85. As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.
86. What one does easily, one does well.
87. I have never known a concern to make a decided success that did not do good, honest work, and even in these days of fiercest competition, when everything would seem to be a matter of price, there lies still at the root of great business success the very much more important factor of quality. The effect of attention to quality, upon every man in the service, from the president of the concern down to the humblest laborer, cannot be overestimated.
88. Humanities education is the worst thing for an industrialist.
89. I choose free libraries as the best agencies for improving the masses of the people, because they give nothing for nothing. They only help those who help themselves.
90. Those who would administer [charity] wisely must, indeed, be wise, for one of the serious obstacles to the improvement of our race is indiscriminate charity. It were better for mankind that the millions of the rich were thrown into the sea than spent to encourage the slothful, the drunken, the unworthy. Of every thousand dollars spent in so-called charity today, it is probable that nine hundred and fifty dollars is unwisely spent – so spent, indeed, as to produce the very evils which it hopes to mitigate or cure.
91. …the law which is never to be broken is never required.
92. The morality of compromise sounds contradictory.
93. If it is right that schools should be maintained by the whole community for the well-being of the whole, it is right also that libraries should be so maintained.
94. Upon the sacredness of property civilization itself depends-the right of the laborer to his hundred dollars in the savings bank, and equally the legal right of the millionaire to his millions.
95. The price which society pays for the law of competition, like the price it pays for cheap comforts and luxuries, is great; but the advantages of this law are also greater still than its cost- for it is to this law that we owe our wonderful material development, which brings improved conditions in its train.
96. There is a power under your control that is greater than poverty, greater than the lack of education, greater than all your fears and superstitions combined. It is the power to take possession of your own mind and direct it to whatever ends you may desire.
97. The sole purpose of being rich is to give away money.
98. The secret of happiness is renunciation.
99. If thou dost not sow, thou shalt not reap.
100. The average person puts only 25% of his energy and ability into his work. The world takes off its hat to those who put in more than 50% of their capacity, and stands on its head for those few and far between souls who devote 100%.
101. Men who reach decisions promptly usually have the capacity to move with definiteness of purpose in other circumstances.
102. Here is the prime condition of success: Concentrate your energy, thought and capital exclusively upon the business in which you are engaged. Having begun on one line, resolve to fight it out on that line, to lead in it, adopt every improvement, have the best machinery, and know the most about it.
103. Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.
104. A library outranks any other one thing a community can do to benefit its people. It is a never failing spring in the desert.
105. He that cannot reason is a fool. He that will not is a bigot. He that dare not is a slave.
106. The problem of our age is the proper administration of wealth, so that the ties of brotherhood may still bind together the rich and poor in harmonious relationship.
107. There is very little success where there is very little laughter.
108. And there is no use whatever, gentlemen, trying to help people who do not help themselves. You cannot push any one up a ladder unless he be willing to climb a little himself.
109. The man who dies leaving behind him millions of available wealth, which was his to administer during his life, will pass away unwept, unhonoured and insung no matter to what uses he leaves the dross which he cannot take with him.
110. All is well since all grows better.
111. Surplus wealth is a sacred trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community.
112. Steel is prince or pauper.
113. The older I get the less I listen to what people say and the more I look at what they do.
114. I am no longer cursed by poverty because I took possession of my own mind, and that mind has yielded me every material thing I want, and much more than I need. But this power of mind is a universal one, available to the humblest person as it is to the greatest.
115. The first man gets the oyster, the second man gets the shell.
116. The more difficult a problem becomes, the more interesting it is.
117. There is no idol more debasing than the worship of money.
118. Do not think a man has done his full duty when he has performed the work assigned him. A man will never rise if he does only this. Promotion comes from exceptional work.
119. Give me the life of the boy whose mother is nurse, seamstress, washerwoman, cook, teacher, angel, and saint, all in one, and whose father is guide, exemplar, and friend. No servants to come between. These are the boys who are born to the best fortune.
120. I demand riches in definite terms; I have a definite plan for acquiring riches;I am engaged in carrying out my plan, and I am giving an equivalent,in useful service, of the value of those riches I demand.
121. You must capture and keep the heart of the original and supremely able man before his brain can do its best.
122. Concentrate your energies, your thoughts and your capital. The wise man puts all his eggs in one basket and watches the basket.
123. A word, a look, an accent, may affect the destiny not only of individuals, but of nations. He is a bold man who calls anything a trifle.
124. Pittsburgh entered the core of my heart when I was a boy and cannot be torn out.
125. I can’t afford to pay them any other way.
126. There is little success where there is little laughter.
127. Anything in life worth having is worth working for.
128. Put all your eggs in one basket and then watch that basket.
129. Do real and permanent good in this world.
130. While the law [of competition] may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department. We accept and welcome, therefore, as conditions to which we must accommodate ourselves, great inequality of environment, the concentration of business, industrial and commercial, in the hands of a few, and the law of competition between these, as being not only beneficial, but essential for the future progress of the race.
131. Concentration is my motto – first honesty, then industry, then concentration.
132. All honor’s wounds are self-inflicted.
133. Neither the individual nor the race is improved by almsgiving. The best means of benefiting the community is to place within its reach the ladders upon which the aspiring can rise.
135. The Republic may not give wealth or happiness, she has not promised these. It is the freedom to pursue these, not their realization, we can claim.
136. You are what you think. So just think big, believe big, act big, work big, give big, forgive big, laugh big, love big and live big.
137. Take away my people, but leave my factories and soon grass will grow on the factory floors……Take away my factories, but leave my people and soon we will have a new and better factory.
138. Teamwork appears most effective if each individual helps others to succeed, increasing the synergy of that team; ideally, every person will contribute different skills to increase the efficiency of the team and develop its unity.
139. Speculation is a parasite feeding upon values, creating none.
140. Any idea that is held in the mind, that is emphasized, that is either feared or revered, will begin at once to cloth itself in the most convenient and appropriate form available.
141. The public only knows one side of [Mark Mark Twain] – the amusing part. Little does it suspect that he was a man of strong convictions upon political and social questions and a moralist of no mean order.
142. It was from my own early experience that I decided there was no use to which money could be applied so productive of good to girls and boys who have good within them and ability and ambition to develop it as the founding of a public library.
143. To kill a man will be considered as disgusting [in the twentieth century] as we in this day consider it disgusting to eat one.
144. A sunny disposition is worth more than fortune.
145. Mutual ignorance breeds mutual distrust.
146. In [my] life … I did not understand steam machinery, but I tried to understand that much more complicated piece of mechanism – man.
147. The surest foundation of a manufacturing concern is quality. After that, and a long way after, comes cost.
148. Libraries are reservoirs of strength, grace and wit, reminders of order, calm and continuity, lakes of mental energy, neither warm nor cold, light nor dark…. In any library in the world, I am at home, unselfconscious, still and absorbed. ~Germaine Greer
149. Young man, make your name worth something.
150. I wish to have as my epitaph: ‘Here lies a man who was wise enough to bring into his service men who knew more than he.’
151. The ‘morality of compromise’ sounds contradictory. Compromise is usually a sign of weakness, or an admission of defeat. Strong men don’t compromise, it is said, and principles should never be compromised.
152. The sound rule in business is that you may give money freely when you have a surplus, but your name never-neither as endorser nor as member of a corporation with individual liability.
153. Be king in your dreams. Make your vow that you will reach that position, with untarnished reputation, and make no other vow to distract your attention.
154. Why should men leave great fortunes to their children? If this is done from affection, is it not misguided affection? Observation teaches that, generally speaking, it is not well for the children that they should be so burdened.
155. And while the law of competition may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department.
156. The man who acquires the ability to take full possession of his own mind may take possession of anything else to which he is justly entitled.
157. I would as soon leave my son a curse as the almighty dollar.
158. The rare individuals who unselfishly try to serve others have an enormous advantage-they have little competition.
159. I will give a million dollars for any convincing proof of a future life.
160. The man of wealth [should] consider all surplus revenues which come to him simply as trust funds, which he is called upon to administer to produce the most beneficial results for the community – the man of wealth thus becoming the mere trustee and agent for his poorer brethren, bringing to their service his superior wisdom, experience and ability to administer, doing for them better than that they would or could do for themselves.
161. It is not the rich man’s son that the young struggler for advancement has to fear in the race for life, nor his nephew, nor his cousin. Let him look out for the dark horse in the boy who begins by sweeping out the office.
162. Pioneering don’t pay.
163. The first thing to do about an obstacle is simply to stand up to it and not complain about it or whine under it but forthrightly attack it. Stand up to your obstacles and do something about them. You will find that they haven’t half the strength you think they have. Just stand up to it, that’s all, and don’t give way under it, and it will finally break. You will break it. Something has to break and it won’t be you, it will be the obstacle.
164. Mr. Morgan buys his partners; I grow my own.
Conclusion: Andrew Carnegie Quotes
The enduring power of Andrew Carnegie quotes lies in their practical wisdom and moral clarity.
From his insights on personal development to his revolutionary views on wealth and social responsibility, Carnegie’s words remain remarkably relevant in today’s world.
As we navigate our own paths to success and consider our responsibilities to society, these Andrew Carnegie quotes serve as beacons of guidance, reminding us that true achievement lies not just in accumulating wealth, but in using it to create lasting positive change.
