I Have Been Insane On The

Attributed to Vanderbilt in a New York Times interview late in his life. The remark was unusual in its candor — Victorian-era businessmen typically justified their acquisitiveness in moral or public-benefit terms. Vanderbilt's blunt acknowledgment of obsession contrasts with the philanthropic framing favored by contemporaries such as Andrew Carnegie, who came of age in the generation after Vanderbilt.