9 Quotes by David Nasaw

In those helter-skelter days of journalism between the Spanish-American War and World War I, the newsies shouting the headlines were as much a part of the urban street scene as the lampposts on every corner.

Great military leaders have to sacrifice soldiers; great captains of industry have to sacrifice people. You can’t only look after the poor, and the weak, and the disabled. You’ve got to do what’s best for the community, and that often means sacrificing innocent people.

Carnegie believed in the survival of the fittest. He believed in Social Darwinism. He believed that you had to give an opportunity to the fittest, who were going to survive, to the fittest to rise themselves as high as they could.

To entrust the government with the power of determining the education which our children receive is entrusting our servant with the power to be our master.

Buffett, when he gave away his money, referenced Carnegie. He quoted from Carnegie. When he said, “The man who dies rich dies disgraced,” in the 1880s, his fellow millionaires looked on him like he was a lunatic, you know, an idiot, a mad man.

The one thing he did die a martyr to was his own conscience. He wanted to do the right thing because it was his idea of the thing to do, and for that – and that alone – he died. This is the satisfaction which you and I will always have.

Carnegie survived and triumphed in an environment rife with cronyism and corruption. Much of the capital invested in his iron and steel companies was derived from business activities that might be today, but were not at the time, regarded as immoral.

Lindbergh was horrified. “The English,” he wrote in his diary, “are in no shape for war. They do not realize what they are confronted with. They have always before had a fleet between themselves and their enemy, and they can’t realize the change aviation has made. I am afraid this is the beginning of the end of England as a great power.”38.

Lindbergh did as he was asked, wrote the report, and presented in it the most frightening scenario imaginable: “For the first time in history a nation has the power either to save or to ruin the great cities of Europe. Germany has such a preponderance of war planes that she can bomb any city in Europe with comparatively little resistance. England and France are far too weak in the air to protect themselves.