Bill Dedman Quotes

If you were a Rockefeller, wouldn’t you be?.

Sometimes I wonder if there is something about my family which invites violence. 'Is it envy,' you ask? I don't know... I've had so much, a son as president, two as senators, a son-in-law who's an ambassador... perhaps God doesn't permit that much.

I don't want to be known as the Hilton heiress, because I didn't do anything for that.

Look at all the billionaires. If I know 15 billionaires, I know 13 unhappy people.

There are people who recall my father as a saint and a monster. I'm quite sure I will share the same fate.

You [a country] cannot be rich, successful and powerful and still be loved, particularly be those who have little success, wealth or power.

You can’t be rich, strong, and loved, particularly by those who are not rich or strong.

There are two things that are fundamental—money and power, and I don’t care much about money

A slave dreams of freedom, a free man dreams of wealth, the wealthy dream of power, and the powerful dream of freedom.

The price you pay for being powerful and being rich is to be hated.

Royalty has always been an unconscious but all-consuming goal of the European immigrant.

Greatness lives on the edge of destruction

Money is a great dignifier.

If you become famous and you start making money, then people want to give you things. It's the exact opposite of how it's supposed to be.

We make children and wealth and amass land and build halls and assemble armies and give great feasts, but only one thing survives us. Reputation.

A man's word Is believed just to the extent of the wealth in his coffers stored.

Money makes even bastards legitimate.

This food-and-shelter theory concerning man's efforts is without insight. Our most persistent and spectacular efforts are concerned not with the preservation of what we are but with the building up of an imaginary conception of ourselves in the opinion of others. The desire for praise is more imperative than the desire for food and shelter.

In the same way the eminence attaching to the mere possession of great wealth disappoints us nine times out of ten, especially if the wealth has been accumulated rapidly. For great wealth is accumulated rapidly by cunning or chance, or a mixture of the two. Cunning has nothing to do with high qualities; it is rather a presumption against them; while chance has nothing to do with them either. Therefore it is that men are always complaining after meeting So-and-so, that he seemed to be astonishingly stupid, though he made a million in ten years and started as a pauper.

A lofty birth or a large fortune portend merit, and cause it to be the sooner noticed.

High descent and meritorious deeds, unless united to wealth, are as useless as seaweed.

An eminent reputation is as dangerous as a bad one.

Not having anything around to read is dangerous: you have to content yourself with life itself, and that can lead you to take risks.

It seems like every new corner we turn, the Rockefellers are already there. And in some cases, they have been there for a long, long time.

Hard work. Well, that=s all right for people who don=t know how to do anything else. It=s all right for people who aren=t lucky. But once you==re lucky, you don=t have to work for other people. You make them work for you.