Browse 6 quotations connecting Andrew Carnegie with Responsibility, with meanings, source notes and related themes.
Each quotation is included because its central idea connects with this theme, not simply because one matching word appears in the sentence.
Sources represented here include The Gospel of Wealth, Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie. Keeping the work and source note beside each quotation makes differences in setting, speaker and emphasis easier to see.
Sources represented here include The Gospel of Wealth, Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie.
“I would concentrate upon the manufacture of iron and steel and be master in that.”
Focused specialization can create depth of knowledge and execution by directing limited attention toward mastering one field instead of scattering effort across many ventures.
Source note: Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie; Carnegie describes his decision to concentrate his business attention on iron and steel.
“The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.”
Accumulating wealth without using it responsibly is presented as a moral failure, shifting attention from possession to stewardship and public benefit.
Source note: The Gospel of Wealth; Carnegie argues that surplus wealth carries social responsibilities during the owner’s lifetime.
“The problem of our age is the proper administration of wealth.”
Carnegie frames wealth not only as possession but as an administrative responsibility, making the use of accumulated resources the central moral question of his essay.
Source note: The Gospel of Wealth, first sentence of the 1889 essay “Wealth.” Carnegie’s position is a historical normative argument about concentrated wealth, not a neutral description of modern economics.
“There are but three modes in which surplus wealth can be disposed of.”
Carnegie organizes his argument around choices for surplus wealth: family inheritance, posthumous public bequest, or administration during the owner’s lifetime.
Source note: The Gospel of Wealth, first essay; 1889 North American Review text represented by Wikisource. The sentence introduces Carnegie’s three-part normative framework.
“This is not wealth, but only competence, which it should be the aim of all to acquire.”
Carnegie distinguishes an adequate level of savings and family provision from the very large surplus fortunes that are the subject of his essay.
Source note: The Gospel of Wealth, first essay; 1889 North American Review text. Carnegie explicitly separates ordinary competence needed for family maintenance and education from the concentrated surplus wealth his argument addresses.
“This, then, is held to be the duty of the man of Wealth: First, to set an example of modest, unostentatious living, shunning display or extravagance.”
Carnegie pairs possession of great wealth with restraint in personal display, arguing that surplus resources create duties beyond conspicuous consumption.
Source note: The Gospel of Wealth, first essay; 1889 North American Review text. The excerpt begins Carnegie’s longer description of what he believes wealthy people owe to dependents and community.