A Quote by John D. Rockefeller

I believe in the dignity of labor, whether with head or hand; that the world owes no man a living but that it owes every man an opportunity to make a living.

John D. Rockefeller

Quote Topics

Believe Dignity Every Every Man Hand Head I Believe I Believe In Labor Living Make Man Opportunity Owes Whether World

Quote Author

John D. Rockefeller
American - Businessman
July 8, 1839 - May 23, 1937

The world owes nothing to any man, but every man owes something to the world.

Thomas A. Edison

Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

Mark Twain

Poetry which owes no man anything, owes nevertheless one debt - an image of the world in which men can again believe.

Archibald MacLeish

The world does not owe men a living, but business, if it is to fulfill its ideal, owes men an opportunity to earn a living.

Owen D. Young

Don't be misled into believing that somehow the world owes you a living. The boy who believes that his parents, or the government, or any one else owes him his livelihood and that he can collect it without labor will wake up one day and find himself working for another boy who did not have that belief and, therefore, earned the right to have others work for him.

David Sarnoff

Subtract from the great man all that he owes to opportunity, all that he owes to chance, and all that he gained by the wisdom of his friends and the folly of his enemies, and the giant will often be seen to be a pygmy.

Charles Caleb Colton

There are only two kinds of men in this world: Honest men and dishonest men. ...Any man who says the world owes him a living is dishonest. The same God that made you and me made this earth. And He planned it so that it would yield every single thing that the people on it need. But He was careful to plan it so that it would only yield up its wealth in exchange for the labor of man. Any man who tries to share in that wealth without contributing the work of his brain or his hands is dishonest.

Ralph Moody

A man who owes a little can clear it off in a very little time, and, if he is a prudent man, will; whereas a man, who by long negligence, owes a great deal, despairs of ever being able to pay, and therefore never looks into his accounts at all.

Lord Chesterfield

An employer has no business with a man's personality. Employment is a specific contract calling for a specific performance... Any attempt to go beyond that is usurpation. It is immoral as well as an illegal intrusion of privacy. It is abuse of power. An employee owes no "loyalty," he owes no "love" and no "attitudes" - he owes performance and nothing else. .... The task is not to change personality, but to enable a person to achieve and to perform.

Peter Drucker

There is too little idea of personal responsibility; too much of "the world owes me a living," forgetting that if the world does owe you a living, you must be your own collector.

Theodore Newton Vail

Don't go around saying the world owes you a living.

Robert Jones Burdette

Some people feel that the world owes them a living.

Clint Eastwood

What the artist owes the world is his work; not a model for living.

Harry Crews

It is to labor, and to labor only, that man owes everything possessed of exchangeable value. Labor is the talisman that has raised him from the condition of the savage: that has changed the desert and the forest into cultivated fields; that has covered the earth with cities, and the ocean with ships; that has given us plenty, comfort, and elegance, instead of want, misery, and barbarism.