(FORTUNE Magazine) – The Second Son Is Heir at Seagram

EDGAR M. BRONFMAN SR., chairman and chief executive of Seagram Co., sat down in his private dining room last spring with his eldest son, Sam, and spoke bluntly. "You're good," he said, "but an unfortunate fact of your life is that you'll always be compared with your brother. And as my successor, he's better."

--March 17, 1986

"Charles is a cheat, and I hope he sues me on it."

-- Bill Koch, "The Curse on the Koch Brothers," Feb. 17, 1997

The Vanderbilts

[Railroad barons] Drew and Fisk and Gould soiled everything they touched and made it poorer, but [Cornelius] Vanderbilt left it richer. His hands were rough and greedy; they were also the hands of a builder.

--May 1930

Du Pont

Alfred I. du Pont is one of the largest individual stockholders in the Du Pont Co. ... And so when he wants to know something about the company he calls up Mr. Lammot du Pont, its President, and Mr. Lammot du Pont may tuck a bundle of papers under his arm and walk across the street from the Du Pont Building to the Delaware Trust Building to explain it to him. Yet Mr. Alfred I. du Pont, who was at one time one of three du Ponts who owned the whole company, is, and for twenty years has been, most definitely out of it, and the most horrible thing any of his cousins could think of would be for him to try to get back in. Alfred I. du Pont loves to annoy his cousins and every now and then he starts buying up Du Pont stock, and so it is very good business for Mr. Lammot du Pont to keep him placated.

--November 1934

"Branches of the Vanderbilt Family Tree: Showing the chief lines through which the Commodore's fortune has passed ..." May 1930

Research by Kate Bonamici and Chris Zappone