Andrew Carnegie

Philosophy

Carnegie wrote The Gospel of Wealth, in which he stated his belief that the rich should use their wealth to help enrich society.

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The following is taken from one of Carnegie's memos to himself:

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:Man does not live by bread alone. I have known millionaires starving for lack of the nutriment which alone can sustain all that is human in man, and I know workmen, and many so-called poor men, who revel in luxuries beyond the power of those millionaires to reach. It is the mind that makes the body rich. There is no class so pitiably wretched as that which possesses money and nothing else. Money can only be the useful drudge of things immeasurably higher than itself. Exalted beyond this, as it sometimes is, it remains Caliban still and still plays the beast. My aspirations take a higher flight. Mine be it to have contributed to the enlightenment and the joys of the mind, to the things of the spirit, to all that tends to bring into the lives of the toilers of Pittsburgh sweetness and light. I hold this the noblest possible use of wealth.

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Carnegie also believed that achievement of financial success could be reduced to a simple formula which could be duplicated by the average person. In 1908, he commissioned Napoleon Hill, then a newspaper reporter, to interview over 500 millionaires to find out the common threads of their success. Hill eventually became his adviser and their work was published in 1928, after Carnegie's death, in Hill's book The Law of Success.

Related Topics:
1908 - Napoleon Hill - 1928 - The Law of Success

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