Ida Tarbell

“Rockefeller and his associates did not build the Standard Oil Co. in the board rooms of Wall Street banks. They fought their way to control by rebate and drawback, bribe and blackmail, espionage and price cutting, by ruthless efficiency of organization.”

“Imagination is the only key to the future. Without it none exists — with it all things are possible.”

“The whole force of the respectable circles to which I belonged, that respectable circle which is the strength of any country, was against the new thought.”

“To know the history of science is to know the history of the human mind.”

“The first and most imperative necessity in journalism is to be sure of your facts.”

“There is no man more dangerous, in a position of power, than he who refuses to accept as a basis for action the accumulated knowledge of the world.”

“Very often people who admit the facts, who are willing to see that Mr. Rockefeller has employed force and fraud to secure his ends, justify him by declaring, 'It's business.'”

“The legitimate greatness of a nation is in the character of its men and women.”

“A mind that is disciplined, a mind that is trained, a mind that is potent, is a mind that is not so much stored with knowledge as one that knows how to get it.”

“The commonest, cheapest, and easiest way of earning a livelihood by writing is by the prostitution of the mind.”

“How can you be a rock in a world of despair, if you have no rock to stand on?”

“Perhaps our national ambition is not yet clear cut.”