Carnegie said it in an interview published on 15 October 1899, headlined “Carnegie On How To Get Rich” in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat and syndicated the same day in The Philadelphia Times. Quote Investigator traced the wording to that interview, and an edited version of the same passage was printed three years later in Barnard Alderson’s 1902 biography — which we read in full — on pages 57–58.
“No man will make a great business who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit of doing it” Andrew Carnegie, interviewed in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 15 October 1899. Verified at Quotle.info · Verbatim: “No man will make a great business who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit of doing it. That spirit is fatal, and the sure proof of a small mind.”
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In context
Evoking the world of Andrew Carnegie — Scottish-American steel industrialist & philanthropist. Theme: "No man will make a great business who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit of doing it". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Minimalist
Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "No man will make a great business who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit of doing it". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
Where it comes from
First published in
St. Louis Globe-Democrat
Date
15 October 1899, sec. 3, p. 4, col. 4 — article headlined “Carnegie On How To Get Rich”
Also printed in
The Philadelphia Times, same day, p. 27, as “The Essentials of Success by Andrew Carnegie”; The St. Paul Globe, 29 October 1899, p. 22
Edited version in
Andrew Carnegie: The Man and His Work, by Barnard Alderson (Doubleday, Page & Co., 1902), pp. 57–58
I do not believe any one man can make a success of a business nowadays. I am sure I never could have done so without my partners, of whom I had thirty-two, the brightest and cleverest young fellows in the world. All are equal to each other, as the members of the Cabinet are equal. The chief must only be first among equals. … I never enjoyed anything more than to get a sound thrashing in an argument at the hands of these young geniuses. No man will make a great business who wants to do it all himself or to get all the credit for doing it. I believe firmly in youths as executive agents. Older heads should be reserved for counsel.
Transcribed from the 1902 Alderson biography, pp. 57–58, which we read in full at the Internet Archive. Note two small differences from the 1899 newspaper wording recorded by Quote Investigator: the book has “a success of a business” where the paper had “a great success,” and “credit for doing it” where the paper had “credit of doing it.”
Quote Investigator ↗ traced the line to an interview with Carnegie published 15 October 1899 in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat (sec. 3, p. 4, col. 4), under the headline “Carnegie On How To Get Rich.” Its verdict: Andrew Carnegie deserves credit for the statements he made in 1899.
The same remarks ran that day in The Philadelphia Times as “The Essentials of Success by Andrew Carnegie,” and again on 29 October 1899 in The St. Paul Globe — all three citations are set out in the same investigation ↗. We could not fetch those pages ourselves; they are behind Newspapers.com.
We independently read Barnard Alderson’s 1902 biography and found the passage where Quote Investigator says it is — chapter 4, “The Steel Master,” running across pages 57 and 58 — in the Internet Archive’s full text ↗. The book’s title page reads “Barnard Alderson · New York · Doubleday, Page & Co. · 1902.”
Worth noting for anyone checking elsewhere: Wikiquote’s Andrew Carnegie page ↗ does not list this quotation in any section. Its absence there says nothing either way — the newspaper and book record settle it.
✓Public domain
Both works carrying this line are long out of copyright in the United States. The interview appeared in newspapers in October 1899, and Barnard Alderson’s biography was published by Doubleday, Page & Co. in 1902 — the copyright notice printed in the book itself reads “Copyright, 1902.” The Internet Archive’s record ↗ states it knows of no copyright restrictions on the item.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
The wording has drifted
The attribution is real — this one is Carnegie’s. What went wrong is the wording. The version most people share today has been rewritten at least twice, and the rewrite changes what the sentence is about: Carnegie was describing how to build a business, not how to be a leader.
✕
Wording“great leader” instead of “great business” most common variant
This is the form that dominates quote sites today. Quote Investigator ↗ records it appearing in a 1975 Deseret News item and again in Roy B. Zuck’s 1997 The Speaker’s Quote Book. It circulates uncited — as on Goodreads ↗, where the platform notes its quotes are not verified.
✕
Wording“credit for doing it” instead of “credit of doing it” early edit
The oldest of the changes, and the most forgivable. Barnard Alderson’s 1902 biography already prints “for” — you can read it on pages 57–58 of the Internet Archive’s full text ↗. Nearly every modern printing follows the book, not the newspaper.
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Wording“No person will make a great business…” modernised
A gender-neutral rewrite. Quote Investigator ↗ documents it in Rich Wilkins’s 1992 book Building a POSitive Attitude, and a 2012 Texas newspaper column dropped the second “to” as well.
✓The 1899 original, as recorded by Quote Investigator ↗: “No man will make a great business who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit of doing it. That spirit is fatal, and the sure proof of a small mind.”
Context
Why it mattered
Carnegie was not offering a motivational slogan. He was describing how he actually ran the largest steel company on earth: through a bench of young partners — thirty-two of them, by his own count — whom he treated, in his phrase, as equals with the chief only “first among equals.” The line about credit is the operating consequence of that structure, not an aphorism bolted onto it.
He said it in 1899. In 1901 he sold Carnegie Steel to J. P. Morgan in the transaction that created U.S. Steel, according to Wikipedia’s account of his career ↗ — so the remark comes from the very end of his years as an operator, looking back at what had made the machine work.
That spirit is fatal, and the sure proof of a small mind.
What Carnegie said next
The sentence most people quote is only half of it. Quote Investigator records the 1899 text continuing: “That spirit is fatal, and the sure proof of a small mind.” The second sentence is the sharper one, and it is almost always dropped.
In the 1902 biography the surrounding passage is blunter still. Carnegie says he “never enjoyed anything more than to get a sound thrashing in an argument at the hands of these young geniuses,” and closes with a hiring rule: “I believe firmly in youths as executive agents. Older heads should be reserved for counsel.” You can read the whole thing in the Internet Archive’s full text ↗.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
Andrew Carnegie emigrated from Dunfermline, Scotland to Pennsylvania as a boy and built Carnegie Steel into the largest steel operation in the world, selling it to J. P. Morgan in 1901 in the deal that formed U.S. Steel. He then spent the rest of his life giving the money away — libraries, universities, and peace endowments — on the principle he had set out in The Gospel of Wealth. He ran the steel business through a rotating bench of young partners rather than as a one-man operation, which is precisely the practice this remark describes.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary source
Andrew Carnegie, quoted in “Carnegie On How To Get Rich,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat (St. Louis, MO), October 15, 1899, sec. 3, p. 4, col. 4; an edited version of the same passage appears in Barnard Alderson, Andrew Carnegie: The Man and His Work (New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1902), 57–58.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘No man will make a great business who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit of doing it’?” Last verified 7 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/no-man-will-make-a-great-business-who-wants-to-do-it-all/