Speculation is a parasite feeding upon values, creating none.
Interpretation
Speculation does not create value but instead undermines it by feeding off existing resources.
This quote by Andrew Carnegie reflects the idea that speculation—essentially guessing or predicting—does not contribute positively to the world or economy but rather drains and undermines the actual value that exists. Instead of generating new worth, it relies on the hard work and efforts of others, effectively becoming a parasite that negatively impacts productive endeavors.
In practice
In a finance seminar discussing the impact of speculation on markets.
Give me the life of the boy whose mother is nurse, seamstress, washerwoman, cook, teacher, angel, and saint, all in one, and whose father is guide, exemplar, and friend. No servants to come between. These are the boys who are born to the best fortune.
To kill a man will be considered as disgusting [in the twentieth century] as we in this day consider it disgusting to eat one.
It is not the rich man's son that the young struggler for advancement has to fear in the race for life, nor his nephew, nor his cousin. Let him look out for the dark horse in the boy who begins by sweeping out the office.
You are what you think. So just think big, believe big, act big, work big, give big, forgive big, laugh big, love big and live big.
Don't be content with doing only your duty. Do more than your duty. It's the horse that finishes a neck ahead that wins the race.
He that cannot reason is a fool. He that will not is a bigot. He that dare not is a slave.
What is grand is necessarily obscure to weak men. That which can be made explicit to the idiot is not worth my care.
You're so heavenly minded, you're no earthly good.
If we did not have a sense of who we were, how we got here, why we want to achieve something - which, on the face of it, on the logic of it, is probably not worth trying - and prove that logic wrong, then you wouldn't succeed; then you would just evaporate.
Take advantage of the ambiguity in the world. Look at something and think what else it might be.
I thought they were helping me. I was so full of trust in them that I felt grateful as they carried me in the air. Only when they threw me overboard did I begin to have doubts.
I was raised never to carp about things and never to moan, because in vaudeville, which is my background, you just got on with it through all kinds of adversities.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.