I have never seen fundamental improvements imposed from the top by ordinances and laws.
IDA TARBELLThe quest of the truth had been born in me – the most tragic and incomplete, as well as the most essential, of man’s quests.
More Ida Tarbell Quotes
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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.
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You cannot settle a new country without suffering, exposure, and danger.
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Cheerful endurance of hardships and contempt of surroundings become a virtue in a pioneer. Comfort is a comparatively new thing in the United States.
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Ripe old age, cheerful, useful, and understanding, is one of the finest influences in the world.
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We are a commercial people. We cannot boast of our arts, our crafts, our cultivation; our boast is in the wealth we produce.
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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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Canonise ‘business success,’ and men who made a success like that of the Standard Oil Trust become national heroes!
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Now, if the Standard Oil Company were the only concern in the country guilty of the practices which have given it monopolistic power this story never would have been written.
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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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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 athlete who abuses the rules, receives, we shall have gone a long way toward making commerce a fit pursuit for our young men.
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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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The methods it employs with such acumen, persistency, and secrecy are employed by all sorts of business men, from corner grocers up to bankers. If exposed, they are excused on the ground that this is business.
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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.
IDA TARBELL