Top 30 David Rockefeller Quotes

I am convinced that material things can contribute a lot to making one’s life pleasant, but, basically, if you do not have very good friends and relatives who matter to you, life will be really empty and sad and material things cease to be important.

The attacks on the World Trade Center and the current economic recession, which is particularly powerful in New York City, have put a number of building plans on hold for the time being.

They decided to establish a museum of modern art where works by contemporary artists would be shown. Mother was viewed as a very progressive person, and not everybody liked the paintings she bought.

Only once in my life was I on the edge of incivility. I do not like to be unkind.

The Christian ethic played an essential part in my upbringing.

Money can add very much to one’s ability to lead a constructive life, not only pleasant for oneself, but, hopefully, beneficial to others.

My own interest in art was because of my mother. My father didn’t like contemporary art, so he didn’t give her large sums to spend. So, she began buying prints and drawings. During my school days, I remember sitting in on many of the early meetings.

Father was the eldest son and the heir apparent, and he set the standard for being a Rockefeller very high, so every achievement was taken for granted and perfection was the norm.

A museum has to renew its collection to be alive, but that does not mean we give on important old works.

For more than 40 years, I have advocated the creation of a ’round the clock’ community. This would mean, at the least, housing, schools and shops of various kinds alongside the commercial buildings. That kind of community had appeared in lower Manhattan in nascent form before Sept. 11, 2001.

The Japanese banks are not having an easy time as they once had.

Mother’s taste was eclectic and ranged from the ancient world to the contemporary from Europe to the U.S.

MoMA is doubling its space, and I decided to raise the money for it.

The Japanese have a wonderful sense of design and a refinement in their art. They try to produce beautiful paintings with the minimum number of strokes.

It is true that I am often startled and even angered and repulsed by the strange directions and provocative content of new forms that seem to pop up every few months.

The conventional notions of art have changed, and a lot of things done today are considered works of art that would have been rejected in the past.

I believe that government is the servant of the people and not their master.

Mother’s interest in contemporary American artists emerged during the 1920s.

I do not like to be unkind.

Eventually, most people felt MoMA had filled a very important gap.

Mother liked beauty wherever she found it, and she found it in many different places, both in nature and in contemporary art. And that’s where they pretty much parted company. Father… anything that was abstract would to him automatically be not very good.

As children we recognized that we belonged to an unusual, even exceptional, family, but the effect was different on each of us.

I think I am basically a happy person.

I learned more from my mother than from all the art historians and curators who have informed me about technical aspects of art history and art appreciation over the years.

I hope the Guggenheim plan will be revived.

I think of art as the highest level of creativity. I was exposed to it since I was very small.

Philanthropy is involved with basic innovations that transform society, not simply maintaining the status quo or filling basic social needs that were formerly the province of the public sector.

I suspect that many corporations have begun to understand that they have an important role to play in the lives of their communities, and that allocating funds to support local groups helps them discharge that function and also burnish their image.

My grandfather, along with Carnegie, was a pioneer in philanthropy, which my father then practiced on a very large scale.

I was brought up feeling that art is a very important part of one’s life. It’s something that I not only enjoy, it’s something I can share with others.