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.
IDA TARBELLI 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.
More Ida Tarbell Quotes
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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.
IDA TARBELL -
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.
IDA TARBELL -
Canonise ‘business success,’ and men who made a success like that of the Standard Oil Trust become national heroes!
IDA TARBELL -
The theory that the man who raises corn does a more important piece of work than the woman who makes it into bread is absurd.
IDA TARBELL -
Rockefeller and his associates did not build the Standard Oil Co. in the board rooms of Wall Street banks.
IDA TARBELL -
One of the permanent possessions of the human heart is the memory of its noble enthusiasms.
IDA TARBELL -
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.
IDA TARBELL -
The economic advantages of sobriety have never been doubtful.
IDA TARBELL -
To denumb the creative impulse above all else essential to the vitality and growth of democratic ideals.
IDA TARBELL -
When the business man who fights to secure special privileges, to crowd his competitor off the track by other than fair competitive methods, receives the same summary disdainful ostracism by his fellows that the doctor or lawyer who is ‘unprofessional,.
IDA TARBELL -
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 -
As a consequence business success is sanctified, and, practically, any methods which achieve it are justified by a larger and larger class.
IDA TARBELL -
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.
IDA TARBELL -
Sacredness of human life! The world has never believed it! It has been with life that we settled our quarrels, won wives, gold and land, defended ideas, imposed religions.
IDA TARBELL -
It is not alone that justice is wounded by denying women a part in the making of the civilized world.
IDA TARBELL






