“One of the permanent possessions of the human heart is the memory of its noble enthusiasms.”

A mind which really lays hold of a subject is not easily detached from it.

There is no more effective medicine to apply to feverish public sentiments than figures.

A mind truly cultivated never feels that the intellectual process is complete until it can reproduce in some media the thing which it has absorbed.

It’s always a revolution, you know, when things occur of which you have never happened to hear!

Were it alone in these methods, public scorn would long ago have made short work of the Standard Oil Company. But it is simply the most conspicuous type of what can be done by these practices.

We have held that a death toll was a necessary part of every human achievement, whether sport, war or industry. A moment’s rage over the horror of it, and we have sunk into indifference.

The only reason I am glad I am a woman is because I will not have to marry one.

One of the most depressing features of the ethical side of the matter is that instead of such methods arousing contempt they are more or less openly admired. And this is logical.

The whole force of the respectable circles to which I belonged, that respectable circle which knew as I did not the value of security won, the slender chance of replacing it if lost or abandoned, was against me.

I decided to write the book to open the eyes of the people of how corrupt John D. Rockefeller company was and the unfair ways he used to be successful.

Cheerful endurance of hardships and contempt of surroundings become a virtue in a pioneer. Comfort is a comparatively new thing in the United States.

There is no man more dangerous, in a position of power, than he who refuses to accept as a working truth the idea that all a man does should make for rightness and soundness, that even the fixing of a tariff rate must be moral.

I have never had illusions about the value of my individual contribution! I realized early that what a man or a woman does is built on what those who have gone before have done, that its real value depends on making the matter in hand a little clearer.

There is no gaming table in the world where loaded dice are tolerated, no athletic field where men must not start fair.

Such fluctuations were the natural element of the speculator, and he came early, buying in quantities and holding in storage tanks for higher prices.

[On dishonest business methods:] … frequently the defender of the practice falls back on the Christian doctrine of charity, and points out that we are erring mortals and must allow for each other’s weaknesses!.

I’m enthusiastic and ambitious, and I work hard.

There is nothing more contagious on this planet than enthusiasm.

How do you go from where you are to where you wanna be? And I think you have to have an enthusiasm for life. You have to have a dream, a goal. And you have to be willing to work for it.

Cash can buy, but it takes enthusiasm to sell.

Enthusiasm for a cause sometimes warps judgment.

Today is life-the only life you are sure of. Make the most of today. Get interested in something. Shake yourself awake. Develop a hobby. Let the winds of enthusiasm sweep through you. Live today with gusto.

Act enthusiastic and you will be enthusiastic.

If you do not live out your faith enthusiastically, maybe you don’t have any faith.