J. P. Morgan

1837–1913 · American financier and banker · U.S. Steel and the Panic of 1907

John Pierpont Morgan Sr. was the dominant investment banker of the Gilded Age, assembling U.S. Steel and personally organising the rescue that ended the Panic of 1907. He is close to the ideal magnet for an adage about concealed motives: enormously powerful, famously terse, widely suspected of having a second agenda behind every public one, and — crucially — the author of no books, which leaves nothing to check a quotation against. Wikiquote’s collection of his documented remarks ↗ does not include this one.

Traced to source

1 quote we’ve traced

“A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason”

Disputed

Not actually J. P. Morgan

Often misattributed to J. P. Morgan

Famous lines widely pinned on J. P. Morgan that we’ve traced to someone else.

“A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason”

actually Unknown

“Will you have sugar and cream in your nose?”

actually Mary Roberts Rinehart

On the research bench

Commonly pinned on J. P. Morgan — under review

3 lines flagged as pinned on J. P. Morgan and queued for a full source trace — not yet verified.

“It will fluctuate.”

Disputed

“Well, I don't know as I want a lawyer to tell me what I cannot do. I hire him to tell how to do what I want to do.”

Disputed

“If you have to ask the price, you can't afford it.”

Disputed

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