Quotes by David Rockefeller

“If necessity is the mother of invention, discontent is the father of progress”

“You know, gentlemen, that I do not owe any personal income tax. But nevertheless, I send a small check, now and then, to the Internal Revenue Service out of the kindness of my heart.”

I am convinced that material things can contribute a lot to making ones life pleasant, but, basically, if you do not have very good friends and relatives who matter to you, life will be really empty and sad and material things cease to be important.

I am a passionate traveler, and from the time I was a child, travel formed me as much as my formal education. In order to appreciate cultures of another nation, one needs to go there, know the people and mingle with the culture of that country. One way to do that, if one is lucky enough, is to buy things from those cultures.

The Japanese have a wonderful sense of design and a refinement in their art. They try to produce beautiful paintings with the minimum number of strokes.

I owe much to mother. She had an experts understanding, but also approached art emotionally.

Money can add very much to ones ability to lead a constructive life, not only pleasant for oneself, but, hopefully, beneficial to others.

Philanthropy is involved with basic innovations that transform society, not simply maintaining the status quo or filling basic social needs that were formerly the province of the public sector.

My grandfather, along with Carnegie, was a pioneer in philanthropy, which my father then practiced on a very large scale.