I was early taught to work as well as play, My life has been one long, happy holiday; Full of work and full of play — I dropped the worry on the way — And God was good to me every day.

I do not think that there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature.

-Verses written on his eighty-sixth birthday (8 July 1925)

• Measured in today's dollars, Rockefeller is the richest person in the history of mankind.