Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.

by Ron Chernow

“cleansing” oil with sulfuric acid—what we now term refining

three aristocracies then ruling America—an aristocracy of intellect in New England, wealth in the mid-Atlantic states, and blood in the South.

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

“A man of words and not of deeds is like a garden full of weeds.”

“Do not many of us who fail to achieve big things … fail because we lack concentration—the art of concentrating the mind on the thing to be done at the proper time and to the exclusion of everything else?”

“The ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee,” he once said, “and I pay more for that ability than for any other under the sun.”

Standard Oil seemed omnipotent in American oil. Everything about its operation was colossal: Twenty thousand wells poured their output into 4,000 miles of Standard Oil pipelines, carrying the crude to seaboard or to 5,000 Standard Oil tank cars. The combine now employed 100,000 people and superintended the export of 50,000 barrels of oil to Europe daily. Rockefeller’s creation could be discussed only in superlatives: It was the biggest and richest, the most feared and admired business organization in the world.

From the outset, Rockefeller swore that he would avoid the rich man’s trap of endowing institutions that would become dependent wards. His ideal was to create organizations that would take on independent lives and outgrow him.

swing into action at the first whiff of trouble, Standard

“Instead of giving alms to beggars,” Rockefeller said, “if anything can be done to remove the causes which lead to the existence of beggars, then something deeper and broader and more worthwhile will have been accomplished.”