Andrew Carnegie — "To Die Rich Is to Die Disgraced"

A thirteen-year-old Scottish immigrant began as a bobbin boy in a cotton mill for just over a dollar a week, climbed through telegraph work and railroads, then bet everything on steel to become the industrial titan of America. Andrew Carnegie's first act is the classic rags-to-riches tale.

But what carved him into history was not how he earned but how he let go. In retirement he devoted his remaining years to giving: over 2,500 libraries across the world, universities, institutes, concert halls — vessels of knowledge still in use today.

As a poor boy, a local benefactor's open personal library had let him read; he repaid that kindness to the world, orders of magnitude larger. His words still cut: "The man who dies rich dies disgraced."

The power to earn and the philosophy to release — a colossal precedent, a century early, for our own manifesto: profit is fuel for challenge, and surplus flows to the future and to others.

What do you work for?