Andrew Carnegie Quotes

Andrew Carnegie (November 25, 1835 – August 11, 1919) was a Scottish-American industrialist. During his visits to britain, Andrew Carnegie realised that steel would now replace iron for the manufacture of heavy goods and this insight led Andrew Carnegie to the enormous expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century and thus Andrew Carnegie became one of the most rich person of his era. He is often regarded as the second-richest man in history after John D. Rockefeller.
Andrew Carnegie was also one of the most important philanthropists of his era. In the end, He set up a trust with his money for the improvement the mankind. In his charity work, Andrew Carnegie gave special emphasis on local libraries, world peace, education and scientific research. This include 3000 public libraries and the Carnegie Institute of Pittsburgh, the Carnegie Institute of Technology and the Carnegie Institution of Washington for research into the natural and physical sciences. Andrew Carnegie also established the Endowment for International Peace in an effort to prevent future wars.
The "Andrew Carnegie Dictum" illustrates Carnegie's generous nature:

1) To spend the first third of one's life getting all the education one can.
2) To spend the next third making all the money one can.
3) To spend the last third giving it all away for worthwhile causes.
Selected Quotes of Andrew Carnegie are:

1. The man who dies rich, dies disgraced.
    
2. The secret of success lies not in doing your own work, but in recognizing the right man to do it.
    
3. People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents.
    
4. There is no use whatever trying to help people who do not help themselves. You cannot push anyone up a ladder unless he be willing to climb himself.
    
5. Perhaps the most tragic thing about mankind is that we are all dreaming about some magical garden over the horizon, instead of enjoying the roses that are right outside today.
    
6. A library outranks any other one thing a community can do to benefit its people. It is a never failing spring in the desert.
    
7. 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.
    
8. 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.
    
9. 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.
    
10. Surplus wealth is a sacred trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community.
     
11. 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.
     
12. If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy, and inspires your hopes.
     
13. As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.
     
14. 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.
     
15. This is where the children of honest poverty have the most precious of all advantages over those of wealth. The mother, nurse, cook, governess, teacher, saint, all in one; the father, exemplar, guide, counsellor, and friend! Thus were my brother and I brought up. What has the child of millionaire or nobleman that counts compared to such a heritage?
     
16. No man can become rich without himself enriching others.
     
17. 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 boys and girls who have good within them and ability and ambition to develop it, as the founding of a public library in a community which is willing to support it as a municipal institution. I am sure that the future of those libraries I have been privileged to found will prove the correctness of this opinion. For if one boy in each library district, by having access to one of these libraries, is half as much benefited as I was by having access to Colonel Anderson's four hundred well-worn volumes, I shall consider they have not been established in vain.
     
18. I resolved to stop accumulating and begin the infinitely more serious and difficult task of wise distribution.
     
19. In bestowing charity, the main consideration should be to help those who will help themselves; to provide part of the means by which those who desire to improve may do so.
     
20. My motto is concentration. First honesty; then industry and then concentration.
     
21. Do your duty and a little more and the future will take care of itself.