I recently read “The Gospel of Wealth”, and essay by Andrew Carnegie, and many quotes from it continue to resonate in my mind, to the point where I feel compelled to post some here.
In just the introduction there are so many gems of wisdom that if a person just read that, it would necessarily change forever the way they see their lot in life. Each time I begin to complain about my situation think of this quote from the essay…
But I never told them at home that I was having a hard tussle. No, no! everything must be bright to them. This was a point of honor, for every member of the family was working hard …and we were telling each other only all the bright things. Besides this, no man would whine and give up — he would die first.
And each time I hear about yet another social program designed to take self-sufficiency away from society, I think of this next quote about poverty itself and the blessing it can be in crafting a grateful heart and determined and self-sufficient disposition…
You know how people moan about poverty as being a great evil, and it seems to be accepted that if people had only plenty of money and were rich, they would be happy and more useful, and get more out of life.
As a rule, there is more genuine satisfaction, a truer life, and more obtained from life in the humble cottages of the poor than in the palaces of the rich! I always pity the sons and daughters of rich men, who are attended by servants, and have governesses at a later age, but am glad to remember that they do not know what they have missed.
They have kind fathers and mothers, too, and think that they enjoy the sweetness of these blessings to the fullest: but this they cannot do ; for the poor boy who has in his father his constant companion, tutor, and model, and in his mother— holy name!— his nurse, teacher, guardian angel, saint, all in one, has a richer, more precious fortune in life than any rich man’s son who is not so favored can possibly know, and compared with which all other fortunes count for little.
It is because I know how sweet and happy and pure the home of honest poverty is, how free from perplexing care, from social envies and emulations, how loving and how united its members may be in the common interest of supporting the family, that I sympathize with the rich man’s boy and congratulate the poor man’s boy; and it is for these reasons that from the ranks of the poor so many strong, eminent, self-reliant men have always sprang and always must spring.
If you will read the list of the immortals who “were not born to die,” you will find that most of them have been born to the precious heritage of poverty.
It seems, nowadays, a matter of universal desire that poverty should be abolished. We should be quite willing to abolish luxury, but to abolish honest, industrious, self-denying poverty would be to destroy the soil upon which mankind produces the virtues which enable our race to reach a still higher civilization than it now possesses.
I have been to the squalor of the cottage of his birthplace (in Dunfermline, Scotland) and to his beautiful grave in Sleepy Hollow, NY, millions of dollars and many years later, and can tell you this man’s accomplishments and wisdom are to be listened to and considered. If only all people were as honest with themselves as this man was, self-sufficiency and accountability would be the norm and society would be much farther along.