David Rockefeller

The conventional notions of art have changed, and a lot of things done today are considered works of art that would have been rejected in the past.

I am a passionate traveler, and from the time I was a child, travel formed me as much as my formal education.

Philanthropy is involved with basic innovations that transform society, not simply maintaining the status quo or filling basic social needs that were formerly the province of the public sector.

I do not like to be unkind.

The Japanese have a wonderful sense of design and a refinement in their art. They try to produce beautiful paintings with the minimum number of strokes.

Eventually, most people felt MoMA had filled a very important gap.

We let Willow cut her hair. When you have a little girl, it’s like, how can you teach her that your in control of her body? If I teach her that I’m in charge of whether or not she can touch her hair, she’s going to replace me with some other man when she goes out into the world. She can’t cut my hair, but that’s her hair. She has got to have command over her body. So when she goes out into the world, she goes out with command that it’s hers. She is used to making those decisions herself. We try to keep giving them those decisions until they can hold the full weight of their lives.

How do people make it through life without a sister?

The quality of a father can be seen in the goals, dreams and aspirations he sets not only for himself, but for his family.

She does have a very nice figure… If [Ivanka] weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her.

I learned in those eight years is that home is where you make it, and we were in the White House for eight years, but it wasn’t the house. It was us in it. It was our value and our love for each other.

He didn’t come out of my belly, but my God, I’ve made his bones, because I’ve attended to every meal, and how he sleeps, and the fact that he swims like a fish because I took him to the ocean. I’m so proud of all those things. But he is my biggest pride.

You leave home to seek your fortune and when you get it, you go home and share it with your family.

I know what it’s like to be married and to live in a house with a garden, but it’s not something I’m striving for at the moment.

Father was the eldest son and the heir apparent, and he set the standard for being a Rockefeller very high, so every achievement was taken for granted and perfection was the norm.

I didn’t want to disrespect my parents, so I never played blues around the house. But I knew then, same as I know today, that I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I think that before they died, they both felt very proud of me.

Nobody loves me but my mother – And she could be jivin’, too.

When I get up and work out, I’m working out just as much for my girls as I am for me, because I want them to see a mother who loves them dearly, who invests in them, but who also invests in herself. It’s just as much about letting them know as young women that it is okay to put yourself a little higher on your priority list.

I am an example of what is possible when girls from the very beginning of their lives are loved and nurtured by people around them.

The joy is still there when I see Sean. He didn’t come out of my belly, but my God, I’ve made his bones, because I’ve attended to every meal, and how he sleeps, and the fact that he swims like a fish because I took him to the ocean. I’m so proud of all his things. But he is my biggest pride.

My father was very energetic; my mother was very energetic. He lived to a very old age, and so did my mother. I believe that I just have it from my father, from my parents. They had wonderful energy.