“After it is all over, the religion of man is his most important possession.”

The impression was gaining ground with me that it was a good thing to let the money be my slave and not make myself a slave to money.

I do not think that there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature.

I’m glad I wrote the book to show what I found out about the [ Standard Oil Company]. I’m glad many people read my book and found out the truth.

Save when you can and not when you have to.

God gave me my money.

The success of each is dependent upon the success of the other.

Competition is a sin.

Success comes from keeping the ears open and the mouth closed.

It is wrong to assume that men of immense wealth are always happy.

I think it is a man’s duty to make all the money he can, keep all that he can and give away all that he can.

Capital and labor are both wild forces which require intelligent legislation to hold them in restriction.

There is no feeling in this world to be compared with self-reliance–do not sacrifice that to anything else.

The secret of success is to get up early, work late and strike oil.

The task is simple. We will organize children and teach them in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way.

I cheat my boys every chance I get. I trade with the boys and skin ’em and I just beat ’em every time I can. I want to make ’em sharp.

Charity is injurious unless it helps the recipient to become independent of it.

Never is a man wholly a saint or a sinner.

A man’s homeland is wherever he prospers.

If someone were to put a proposition before men bidding them choose, after examination, the best customs in the world, each nation would certainly select its own

I’m interested in the fact that the less secure a man is, the more likely he is to have extreme prejudice.

O, dread and dire word. Eternity! What mind of man can understand it?

Perhaps the best conversationalist in the world is the man who helps others to talk.

Do not desire, for what you desire you get, and with it comes terrible bondage. It is nothing but bringing “noses on us,” as in the case of the man who had three boons to ask. We never get freedom until we are self-contained. “Self is the Saviour of self, none else.”

Fear is the destructive energy in man. It withers the mind, it distorts thought, it leads to all kinds of extraordinarily clever and subtle theories, absurd superstitions, dogmas, and beliefs.