Cornelius Vanderbilt Quotes
27 quotes from Cornelius Vanderbilt — Shipping and railroad magnate who built the largest fortune in America..
“If I had learned education I would not have had time to learn anything else.”
“You have undertaken to cheat me. I won't sue you, for the law is too slow. I'll ruin you.”
“Never be a minion, always be an owner.”
“I don't care half so much about making money as I do about making my point, and coming out ahead.”
“Never tell anyone what you are going to do till you've done it.”
“What do I care about the law? Ain't I got the power..?”
“I am not afraid of my enemies, but by God, you must look out when you get among your friends.”
“There is no friendship in trade.”
“I have always served the public to the best of my ability. Why? Because, like every other man, it is to my interest to do so.”
“I have been insane on the subject of money-making all my life.”
“Money is power, and you ought to be careful with your money.”
“Work for your money, don't let your money work only for others.”
“If a fellow's got guts he can always win.”
“All you have to do is attend to your own business, then go ahead. I never tell what I'm going to do till I've done it.”
“I guess I've built a hundred steamships and steamboats… I never paid a dollar of insurance… Good vessels and good masters – that's the best kind of insurance.”
“You've got to make folks believe you'll always run. If they can depend on you, they'll deal with you.”
“Ain't got time to be sick.”
“Gentlemen: You have undertaken to cheat me. I will not sue you because the law takes too long. I will ruin you.”
“Pay ready money for everything you buy, and never sell anything you don't own.”
“The law, as I view it, goes too slow for me when I have the remedy in my own hands.”
“I can't afford to be sick no longer.”
“Say nothing and jump quick.”
“Gentlemen: You have undertaken to cheat me. I won't sue you, for the law is too slow. I will ruin you.”
“How do I make a profit? I make it by a saving of the expenditures. If I cannot use the capital of that road for pretty nigh $2,000,000 per year better than anyone that has ever been in it, then I do not want to be in the road.”
“I never had any advantage of anybody in running steamships; but if I could not run a steamship alongside another man and do it as well as he for twenty percent less than it cost him, I would leave the ship.”
“He had spent most of his career as a radical force. From his beginnings as a teenage boatman before the War of 1812, he had led the rise of competition as a virtue in American culture. He had disrupted the remnants of the eighteenth-century patricians, shaken the conservative merchant elite, and destroyed monopolies at every step.”
“The railroads are not run for the benefit of the 'dear public' — that cry is all nonsense — they are built by men who invest their money and expect to get a fair percentage on the same.”
