Man is born a predestined idealist, for he is born to act. To act is to affirm the worth of an end, and to persist in affirming the worth of an end is to make an ideal.
I've always said that the better off you are, the more responsibility you have for helping others. Just as I think it's important to run companies well, with a close eye to the bottom line, I think you have to use your entrepreneurial experience to make corporate philanthropy effective.
He who confers a benefit on anyone loves him better than he is beloved.
In everything I do, whether in business, philanthropy or my personal life, I am guided by my inner truth, my values.
I regard philanthropy as a tragic apology for wrong conditions under which human beings live.
Doing for people what they can and ought to do for themselves is a dangerous experiment. In the last analysis, the welfare of the workers depends upon their own initiative. Whatever is done under the guise of philanthropy or social morality which in any way lessens initiative is the greatest crime that can be committed against the toilers. Let social busybodies and professional "public morals experts" in their fads reflect upon the perils they rashly invite under this pretense of social welfare.
Whatever we give to the wretched, we lend to fortune.
A man should make all he can, and give all he can.
Pure philanthropy is very well in its way but philanthropy plus five percent is a good deal better.
When thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what they right hand doeth.
Philanthropist, n. : A rich (and usually bald) old gentleman who has trained himself to grin while his conscience is picking his pocket.
I urge you to celebrate the extraordinary courage and contributions of refugees past and present.
I always had the old-school model that I'm going to work for as long as I'm relevant and focus on for-profit activities and someday when I retire I'm going to learn about philanthropy.
The imperative is to define what is right and do it.
Legal plunder has two roots: One, as we have just seen, is in human selfishness; the other is in false philanthropy.
I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.
It never was our guise to slight the poor, or aught humane despise.
In business, the market gives you feedback in real time. Your sales figures tell you what's working, what isn't, and how you need to change. If you don't listen to the feedback, you go belly up. In philanthropy, there is no market.
I love my fellow creatures - I do all the good I can - yet everybody says I'm such a disagreeable man!
Without a love of humankind there is no love of God.