Quotes by David Rockefeller

“I am convinced that material things can contribute a lot to making one's life pleasant, but, basically, if you do not have very good friends and relatives who matter to you, life will be really emp...”

“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 peop...”

“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 expert's understanding, but also approached art emotionally.”

“Money can add very much to one's 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.”

“Whatever the price of the Chinese Revolution, it has obviously succeeded, not only in producing more efficient and dedicated administration, but also in fostering a high morale and cummunity propos...”

“But this present window of opportunity, during which a truly peaceful and interdependent world order might be built, will not be open for long. Already there are powerful forces at work that threat...”

“Courting Peggy McGrath provided me with a very pleasant diversion and eventually with the most important relationship of my life.”

“If the disagreement was strong enough, we could end up pretty close to the borderline of incivility.”

“I don't recall that I have said — and I don't think that I really feel — that we need a world government. We need governments of the world that work together and collaborate. But, I can't imagine t...”

“There have been people — ever since I've had any kind of position in the world — who have accused me of being ruler of the world. I have to say that I think for the large part, I would have to deci...”

“I think that one of the things that is needed is the fact that I don't think enough people in high positions in our country accept the importance of our world role with sufficient gravity. In other...”

“I think that that has to be related to the problems within our own country. I was reading in the papers today that there's a grave concern about what our role should be, how it should be handled, a...”

“I think that the best hope for peace and prosperity in the world is greater cooperation among nations, which in turn will be produced if both our governments and the people of our countries travel ...”

“For more than a century, ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents such as my encounter with Castro to attack the Rockefeller family ...”

“We are grateful to The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almo...”

“I think without internationalists like you, the international system we have been trying to build, the international system we have today, wouldn't be here.”

“Far from having an attachment to the past and to its codes, David Rockefeller, and really all the Rockefellers, were perpetually falling for everything that was new. They embraced every new educati...”