Philanthropist Quotes

The art world is a jungle echoing to the calls of vicious jealousies and ruthless combat between dealers and collectors; but I have been walking in the jungles of business all my life, and fighting tooth and nail for pictures comes as a form of relaxation to me.

Giving is the secret of a healthy life. Not necessarily money, but whatever a man has of encouragement and sympathy and understanding.

John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

You have not fulfilled every duty unless you have fulfilled that of being pleasant.

There is scarcely an instance of a man who has made a fortune by speculation and kept it

Andrew Carnegie

The finest flowers of genius have grown in an atmosphere where those of Nature are prone to droop, and difficult to bring to maturity.

In the design of fission reactors man was not an innovator but an unwitting imitator of nature.

There's a big difference between education and knowledge. The moment that we don't invest in educating Jewish children according to the roots that were the basis of our education for thousands of years, we are knowledge-givers rather than educators.

Love seems to beautify and inspire all nature. It raises the earthly caterpillar into the ethereal butterfly, it paints the feathers in spring, it lights the glowworm's lamp, it wakens the song of birds, and inspires the poet's lay. Even inanimate Nature seems to feel the spell, and flowers glow with the richest colours.

John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury

This country has given me so much that I am only too happy to be allowed to help it to develop and to be able to give back to it a fraction of what it has given to me.

The education of the present race of females is not very favorable to domestic happiness. For my own part, I call education, not that which smothers a woman with accomplishments, but that which tends to consolidate a firm and regular system of character; that which tends to form a friend, a companion, and a wife.

A man always has two reasons for what he does—a good one and the real one.

You have to learn all the big ideas in the key disciplines in a way that they're in a mental latticework in your head and you automatically use them for the rest of your life. If you do that, I solemnly promise you that one day you'll be walking down the street and you'll look to your right and left and you'll think "my heavenly days, I'm now one of the few competent people in my whole age cohort." If you don't do it, many of the brightest of you will live in the middle ranks or in the shallows.

I rise today to commemorate one of the most fateful days in the history of the State of Colorado, the day the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant outside of Boulder nearly became America's own Chernobyl, some 30 years before that terrible accident in the Ukraine.

There is no "them"; there is only "us." Remember "us"? We the people?... We the people say that in the most multicultural, multiracial and multiethnic America ever, now is the time to make real the promises of our democracy.... Now is the time to stop talking about our pain and to start talking about our plan.

Probably the greatest single obstacle to the progress and happiness of the American people lies in the willingness of so many men to invest their time and money in multiplying competitive industries instead of opening up new fields, and putting their money into lines of industry and development that are needed.

John D. Rockefeller

Learning to earn a living is only half the job. The other half is to make life worthwhile and meaningful.

Sathya Sai Baba

To be in contact with scientists, to become in a small way a scientist myself if possible, perhaps to cast new light on physical phenomena, to be able to uncover what is real and definitive, was my life's great dream.

The prevailing wisdom is that markets are always right. I take the opposite position. I assume that markets are always wrong.

Each of us has a purpose for living beyond our own survival and pleasure. Every individual is like a thread in a beautiful tapestry with a vital contribution to make, not only to the sustenance of life as we know it, but in the creation and development of more beneficial expressions of life.

Devotion is not drama. Devotion is a way of living. Devotion is the way you walk, the way you breathe, and the way your heart beats.

I go to a great many places; I go into one house and they cry, cry, cry,—somebody dead. I go into another, and it is all laugh, laugh—they are happy and glad. I go to another, it is all shut up dark, they move very softly, they speak in a whisper,—somebody very sick. I come here it is all, dance and sing, and flowers and wedding dresses. I say nothing; but it makes me think a great deal.

Pierre Toussaint

Classic art was like a king who has the right to govern, punish, reward, and choose his favorites from an aristocracy, obliging them to adopt conventional rules as to manners, morals, and modes of speech. The new art tries to imitate nature in its unconsciousness, its moral indifference.

Eugène-Melchior de Vogüé

There can be no reason why man should not make towns liveable and healthy... just as much subject to the beneficent influence of bright sunshine, fresh air, flowers, and plants, as the country.

Lord Leverhulme

On seeing the Morris Minor (British car) prototype:

It looks like a poached egg—we can't make that.

William Morris, 1st Viscount Nuffield

The worst sin, the ultimate sin for me, in anything, is to be bored.