The thought is genuinely Carnegie’s, but one word is wrong: in an interview published 15 October 1899 he said no man will make a great business that way — not a great leader. Quote Investigator ↗ traces the “leader” swap to a Salt Lake City newspaper in 1975, seventy-six years later.
“No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or get all the credit for doing it” Andrew Carnegie, quoted in Barnard Alderson, Andrew Carnegie: The Man and His Work (New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1902), 57–58; from an interview published in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 15 October 1899. The familiar "great leader" wording is a later alteration — Carnegie said "business." · Verbatim: “No man will make a great business who wants to do it all himself or to get all the credit for doing it.”
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Provenance
Where the real sentence lives
Printed in
Andrew Carnegie: The Man and His Work
Author
Barnard Alderson — Doubleday, Page & Company, New York, 1902; pages 57–58
Originally spoken
Interview published 15 October 1899, St. Louis Globe-Democrat, “Carnegie On How To Get Rich”
Wording
“a great business” — not “a great leader”
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… The way they differed from me and beat me many a time was delightful to behold. 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.
trimmed
As printed in Alderson’s 1902 biography, pages 57–58. The 1899 newspaper text of the same interview reads “all the credit of doing it”; Alderson’s “for” is the form the modern quotation inherited.
15 October 1899 — a syndicated interview, “Carnegie On How To Get Rich,” runs in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat and, the same day, in The Philadelphia Times. It contains the sentence in its original form, with “business” and “credit of doing it,” per Quote Investigator ↗.
1902 — Barnard Alderson’s biography reprints the passage on pages 57–58 with “credit for doing it,” the phrasing the modern quote inherited. Confirmed in the scanned first edition ↗.
15 November 1975 — a Salt Lake City Deseret News item swaps business for leader. It is the earliest “leader” printing in Quote Investigator’s chronology ↗, and a 1997 quotation anthology fixes it under the heading Leadership.
Today — Goodreads ↗ and comparable sites carry the “great leader” wording under Carnegie’s name with no book, date or page — which is why almost nobody quoting it knows he was talking about a company.
✓Public domain
Both documented sources of Carnegie’s sentence predate 1931 — the interview published 15 October 1899 and Barnard Alderson’s 1902 biography — so the text is in the public domain in the United States. The Internet Archive records its scan of the 1902 volume as not in copyright.
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
Right man, wrong word
This is not a fabricated quote, and Carnegie is not the wrong name on it. It is something subtler and more common: a real sentence from a real interview that has drifted one noun away from what he actually said, plus a couple of smaller edits picked up along the way.
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The key word“a great leader” Altered
Carnegie said “a great business.” The leader version does not appear in his 1899 remarks or in the 1902 biography that reprinted them; the earliest “leader” printing in Quote Investigator’s chronology ↗ is a Deseret News item of 15 November 1975.
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A preposition“all the credit for doing it” Edited early
The 1899 newspaper text reads “all the credit of doing it.” The change to “for” was made by Barnard Alderson’s 1902 biography, which is where most later quoters picked it up — visible on pages 57–58 of the scanned edition ↗.
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A dropped word“or get all the credit” Clipped
Both documented printings keep the second “to”: “or to get all the credit.” Quote Investigator ↗ records the clipped phrasing in a 2012 Longview, Texas newspaper column.
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Modernised“No person will make…” Rewritten
A 1992 motivational book, Building a POSitive Attitude, printed a de-gendered version, per Quote Investigator ↗. It circulates on business blogs alongside the leader form.
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Where it isn’tCarnegie’s own books Not there
Neither wording appears in his Autobiography ↗, and the quotation is absent from Wikiquote’s Carnegie page ↗ in any form. It survives because a reporter wrote it down, not because Carnegie published it.
✓What he actually said, in an interview published 15 October 1899: “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.” The second sentence — the sharpest part — is almost never quoted. Quote Investigator ↗
Context
Why he said it about business, not leadership
The line comes out of a specific boast. Asked in 1899 how young men get rich, Carnegie turned the question toward his partners — thirty-two of them, promoted out of his own works and given stock. “All are equal to each other, as the members of the Cabinet are equal,” he said. “The chief must only be first among equals.”
That is the setting for the famous sentence, and it explains the original noun. Carnegie was not offering a theory of leadership; he was explaining why a company outgrows any one owner, and why hoarding recognition is, in his words, “the sure proof of a small mind.” Two years later he sold Carnegie Steel to J. P. Morgan and the partners he had been describing were made rich alongside him.
“The chief must only be first among equals.”
How “business” became “leader”
The swap is easy to explain: the sentence reads as leadership advice, and by the 1970s that is how anthologists wanted to use it. Quote Investigator’s chronology shows the intermediate steps — the 1902 biography quietly changed “credit of doing it” to “credit for doing it,” a 1946 management book repeated the business version, and only in 1975 does “leader” appear, in a Deseret News notice for a volunteer center.
From there it hardened. Roy B. Zuck’s 1997 The Speaker’s Quote Book lists the “leader” form under Leadership, and by 2012 a Texas newspaper was printing it with the second “to” dropped as well — the exact shape most quote sites carry today.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1835–1919 · Scottish-American steel industrialist and philanthropist
Carnegie emigrated from Dunfermline to Allegheny, Pennsylvania in 1848 at the age of twelve and built the Carnegie Steel Company into the dominant American steel producer, selling it to J. P. Morgan in 1901 in the deal that formed U.S. Steel. He credited that success less to his own effort than to the thirty-two partners he promoted from inside the works — “the brightest and cleverest young fellows in the world.” He spent the rest of his life giving the proceeds away, chiefly to public libraries.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary source
Barnard Alderson, Andrew Carnegie: The Man and His Work (New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1902), 57–58. Carnegie’s remarks were first published in an interview in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 15 October 1899, per Quote Investigator.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or get all the credit for doing it’?” Last verified 17 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/no-man-will-make-a-great-leader-who-wants-to-do-it-all/