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 TARBELLIn walking through the world there is a choice for a man to make.
More Ida Tarbell Quotes
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Speculation in oil stock companies was another great evil … From the first, oil men had to contend with wild fluctuations in the price of oil. …
IDA TARBELL -
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.
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 -
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.
IDA TARBELL -
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 TARBELL -
I have never seen fundamental improvements imposed from the top by ordinances and laws.
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 -
A popular disturbance never remains long in the full control of those who start it.
IDA TARBELL -
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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They fought their way to control by rebate and drawback, bribe and blackmail, espionage and price cutting, by ruthless efficiency of organization.
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The first and most imperative necessity in war is money, for money means everything else — men, guns, ammunition.
IDA TARBELL -
No value is destroyed for you – only for the original owner.
IDA TARBELL -
The only reason I am glad I am a woman is because I will not have to marry one.
IDA TARBELL -
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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A more immediate wrong is the way the movement for a fuller, freer life for all human beings is hampered.
IDA TARBELL