We are a commercial people. We cannot boast of our arts, our crafts, our cultivation; our boast is in the wealth we produce.
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
-
-
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.
IDA TARBELL -
As a consequence business success is sanctified, and, practically, any methods which achieve it are justified by a larger and larger class.
IDA TARBELL -
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 -
There is no gaming table in the world where loaded dice are tolerated, no athletic field where men must not start fair.
IDA TARBELL -
The inference is that the men alone render useful service. But neither man nor woman eats these things until the woman has prepared it.
IDA TARBELL -
Cheerful endurance of hardships and contempt of surroundings become a virtue in a pioneer. Comfort is a comparatively new thing in the United States.
IDA TARBELL -
[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!.
IDA TARBELL -
The quest of the truth had been born in me – the most tragic and incomplete, as well as the most essential, of man’s quests.
IDA TARBELL -
Buy cheap and sell high is a rule of business, and when you control enough money and enough banks you can always manage that a stock you want shall be temporarily cheap.
IDA TARBELL -
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.
IDA TARBELL -
I wanted the people to know the truth about the Standard Oil Company.
IDA TARBELL -
we were raising our standard of living at the expense of our standard of character.
IDA TARBELL -
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.
IDA TARBELL -
Yet Mr. Rockefeller has systematically played with loaded dice, and it is doubtful if there has ever been a time since 1872 when he has run a race with a competitor and started fair.
IDA TARBELL -
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.
IDA TARBELL