The only reason I am glad I am a woman is because I will not have to marry one.
IDA TARBELLImagination is the only key to the future. Without it none exists – with it all things are possible.
More Ida Tarbell Quotes
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It is not alone that justice is wounded by denying women a part in the making of the civilized world.
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One of the permanent possessions of the human heart is the memory of its noble enthusiasms.
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[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!.
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Very often people who admit the facts, who are willing to see that Mr. Rockefeller has employed force and fraud to secure his ends, justify him by declaring, ‘It’s business.’ That is, ‘it’s business’ has come to be a legitimate excuse for hard dealing, sly tricks, special privileges.
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Canonise ‘business success,’ and men who made a success like that of the Standard Oil Trust become national heroes!
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An excuse which, if carried to its legitimate conclusion, would leave our business men weeping on one another’s shoulders over human frailty, while they picked one another’s pockets.
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One of our gravest mistakes is persuading ourselves that nobody has passed this way before.
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Such fluctuations were the natural element of the speculator, and he came early, buying in quantities and holding in storage tanks for higher prices.
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My whole theory for the improvement of society is based on a belief in the discipline and the education of the individual to self-control and right doing, for the sake of right doing.
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A popular disturbance never remains long in the full control of those who start it.
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A mind which really lays hold of a subject is not easily detached from it.
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No value is destroyed for you – only for the original owner.
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Many men ridicule the idea that it can be scientifically handled. They tell us the unemployed have always been with us, and always must be. It is the oldest reason in the world for tolerating injustice and misery.
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a little sounder for those who come after. Nobody begins or ends anything. Each person is a link, weak or strong, in an endless chain.
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A more immediate wrong is the way the movement for a fuller, freer life for all human beings is hampered.
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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.
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He can choose the fair and open path, the path which sound ethics, sound democracy, and the common law prescribe, or choose the secret way by which he can get the better of his fellow man.
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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.
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Imagination is the only key to the future. Without it none exists – with it all things are possible.
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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.
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Life is but a collection of habits.
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It is but another of the proofs which are heaping up in American industry to-day that whatever is good for men and women – contributes to their health, happiness, development – is good for business.
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My final comment is that I still believe this man [John D. Rockefeller] is corrupt and he used unfair ways to become wealthy, all he cared about was his money and wasn’t considered.
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It’s always a revolution, you know, when things occur of which you have never happened to hear!
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The first and most imperative necessity in war is money, for money means everything else — men, guns, ammunition.
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Perhaps our national ambition to standardize ourselves has behind it the notion that democracy means standardization. But standardization is the surest way to destroy the initiative.
IDA TARBELL