David Rockefeller

If necessity is the mother of invention, discontent is the father of progress.

Money can add very much to one’s ability to lead a constructive life, not only pleasant for oneself, but, hopefully, beneficial to others.

A museum has to renew its collection to be alive, but that does not mean we give on important old works.

One cannot expect to coast along and rise automatically to the top, no matter what friends you may have in the company. There may have been a time when, in large corporations, a person could rise simply because he had a stock interest or because he had friends in top management. That’s not true today. Success in business requires training and discipline and hard work. But if you’re not frightened by these things, the opportunities are just as great today as they ever were.

Only once in my life was I on the edge of incivility.

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

When I see something I like, I buy it, but I do not look for it madly.

I think it’s sad when people make a lot of money and they want the biggest boat or the biggest car or the biggest plane.

We went to theatres and museums with a crowd of bodyguards.

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.

Guilt for being rich, and guilt thinking that perhaps love and peace isn’t enough and you have to go and get shot or something.

The only wealth I have to give is not material and if you need much more than that, I’m not available.

very day I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I’m not there, I go to work.

Be not penny-wise. Riches have wings. Sometimes they fly away of themselves, and sometimes they must be set flying to bring in more.

My grandfather, along with Carnegie, was a pioneer in philanthropy, which my father then practiced on a very large scale.

Wealth – any income that is at least one hundred dollars more a year than the income of one’s wife’s sister’s husband.

No man’s fortune can be an end worthy of his being.

Much corporate giving is charitable in nature rather than philanthropic.

We were afraid of attempts of kidnapping.

Of great wealth there is no real use, except in its distribution, the rest is just conceit.

You know, gentlemen, that I do not owe any personal income tax. But nevertheless, I send a small check, now and then, to the Internal Revenue Service out of the kindness of my heart.