Inspirational Quotes by B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

A certain ultra-dignified gentleman of unusual prominence carried himself so stiffly that nobody felt free to call him by his first name. He quarreled with a friend of earlier days and from then on the two never spoke. The day the friend died an associate found the ultra-dignified gentleman staring through the window. When he came out of his reverie, he soliloquized with a sigh, “He was the last to call me John”. Is any man really entitled to regard himself a success who has failed to inspire at least a goodly number of fellow mortals to greet him by his first name?
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Friendship

D’ye think I’m in business for my health? How often have you heard that? Every time I hear it I conclude that the man doesn’t know what he is in business for. What are we in business for? We are in business to benefit others. If we are not, then our business won’t prosper permanently. All business is a matter of reciprocity, of giving something in exchange for something else. Unless we give, we cannot receive. And the man or concern that gives us most naturally gets most in return. He reaps most who serves most. The most notably successful businesses are those that have rendered signally valuable services to the people.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Giving

Honesty is the cornerstone of character. The honest man or woman seeks not merely to avoid criminal or illegal acts, but to be scrupulously fair, upright, fearless in both action and expression. Honesty pays dividends both in dollars and in peace of mind.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Honesty

Opportunity rarely knocks on your door. Knock rather on opportunity’s door if you ardently wish to enter.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Opportunity

Accuse American businessmen of being responsible for radicalism and they would indignantly deny the accusation. Yet, in one fundamental sense, they are responsible. They are responsible in the sense that they have utterly neglected to take part in the work and the organization which precede the choosing of candidates for political office. Local political organizations all over the land are conducted and controlled, as a rule, by politicians…. Businessmen have shirked such responsibilities, leaving an untrammeled field to others less capable of carrying on the administration of government.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Politics

You have no idea how big the other fellow’s troubles are.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Opportunities, Reality

When the worms are scarce, what does a hen do? Does she stop scratching? She does not. She scratches all the harder. A lot of businessmen have been showing less sense than a hen since orders became scarce. They have laid off salesmen; they have stopped or reduced their advertising; they have simply resigned themselves to inaction and, of course, to pessimism. If a hen knows enough to scratch all the harder when the worms are scarce, surely businessmen … ought to have gumption enough to scratch all the harder for business.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Perseverance

New Year, the season for changes in positions and advances in salaries, approaches. If you have in your employ some who deserve more salary, do not compel them to go through the unpleasant ordeal of asking a raise, but, rather, voluntarily increase their remuneration. A raise that comes from the boss without asking is worth a lot more than one that has to be gouged out of him. Is it not true that a great many employers who would not dream of overcharging their customers have no qualms whatever about underpaying their employees if the latter will submit without protest?
—B. C. Forbes

When you delve deep enough, you find that practically every great fortune and great enterprise in America have sprung from the courageous enterprise of some individual. It was Commodore Vanderbilt’s enterprise in switching first from running a ferryboat to running other ships, and then, when he was well along in years, his enterprise in switching into railroading, that created what was to become one of the most notable fortunes in the history of the world.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Business

Madame Curie didn’t stumble upon radium by accident. She searched and experimented and sweated and suffered years before she found it. Success rarely is an accident.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Success

No man can fight his way to the top and stay at the top without exercising the fullest measure of grit, courage, determination, resolution. Every man who gets anywhere does so because he has first firmly resolved to progress in the world and then has enough stick-to-it-tiveness to transform his resolution into reality. Without resolution, no man can win any worthwhile place among his fellow men.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Determination

The person who renders loyal service in a humble capacity will be chosen for higher responsibilities, just as the biblical servant who multiplied the one pound given him by his master was made ruler over ten cities.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Leadership, Leaders

The victors of the battles of tomorrow will be those who can best harness thought to action. From office boy to statesman, the prizes will be for those who most effectively exert their brains, who take deep, earnest and studious counsel of their minds, who stamp themselves as thinkers.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Action

Uncertainty hurts business. It annoys individuals. Why keep the whole country, including business and individuals, in uncertainty over the extent of the tax burdens to be placed upon us? How many of those who voted for Calvin Coolidge imagined for a moment that would do nothing to bring about tax relief before 1926? … But if the Administration persists in opposing a special session then it will inevitably be 1926 before action is taken…. Coolidge and Congress should ease our minds and grease our activities by reforming and reducing taxation as soon as feasible after March 4.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Doubt

Call the roll in your memory of conspicuously successful (business) giants and, if you know anything about their careers, you will be struck by the fact that almost every one of them encountered inordinate difficulties sufficient to crush all but the gamest of spirits. Edison went hungry many times before he became famous.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Success, Perseverance, Resolve, Endurance, Role models

What would you call America’s most priceless asset? Surely not its limitless natural resources, not its matchless national wealth, not its unequalled store of gold, not its giant factories, not its surpassing railroads, not its unprecedented volume of cheap power. Is not its most priceless asset the character of its people, their indomitable self-confidence, their transcendent vision, their sleepless initiative and, perhaps above all, their inherent, irrepressible optimism?
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: America

Talking things over has its place in an organization (but) so-called conferences are being grossly overdone. One executive stops at the desk of another to tell him, perhaps, about the wonderful score he made at golf on Saturday afternoon. This chin-chin immediately becomes a conference, and neither the office boy nor the telephone operator must disturb either gentleman. More idle gossip is indulged in at many business conferences these days than an old wives’ sewing circle would be guilty of.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Gossip

The real friend is he or she who can share all our sorrow and double our joys.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Sharing, Friendship

A big business man was telling Henry Ford about a coach driver of super-expertness with his whip. The driver was telling how he could flick a fly off his horse’s ear with his whip-and, a fly alighting just then, he promptly did so. Next he spied a grasshopper beside the road, and he flicked it off with equal dexterity. A little further along the road the passenger noticed an insect on a bush, and nudged the driver to get him. Not on your life, replied the master of the whip. That there insect is a hornet sitting on his nest with an organization behind him. I leave him alone.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Business

Summer, with its dog days, its vacations, its distractions, is over. We have had our holidays, our rest, our recreation. The fall season, with its new opportunities for effort, enterprise and achievement, is upon us. Let us rip off our coats and get down to business. We may have allowed pessimism to grip us during the summer months. We may even have allowed laziness to enter our bones. Now it is up to us to throw off both lassitude and pessimism. The time has come for action, for aggressiveness. … .
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Seasons

Don’t you feel disgusted when you see some fellow strutting along with the air of a peacock? Doesn’t the pompous gentleman cause you to laugh-or swear? Isn’t vanity the essence of childishness? I have been trying to analyze in my own mind whether more or fewer of our so-called big men are obsessed with pride today than 20 years ago. I believe that more of our leaders are now democratic, approachable, likeable fellows than was the case in the earlier years of this century…. The press and the people have abundantly brought it home to the rich that their riches do not entitle them to any special deference or homage. … .
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Vanity

Opportunity can benefit no man who has not fitted himself to seize it and use it. Opportunity woos the worthy, shuns the unworthy. Prepare yourself to grasp opportunity and opportunity is likely to come your way. It is not so fickle, capricious and unreasoning as some complain.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Opportunity

The human being who lives only for himself finally reaps nothing but unhappiness. Selfishness corrodes. Unselfishness ennobles, satisfies. Don’t put off the joy derivable from doing helpful, kindly things for others.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Kindness, Selfishness, Service, Giving

America, in the eyes of the world, typifies above all else this quality of initiative. The greatest successes are nearly all the fruit of initiative. Why do we hold in such high esteem the achievements of the Wright brothers? Because they were illustrious examples of initiative and tenacity. And ideas are born of initiative, the children of men and women of initiative. Advancement is applied initiative. Don’t imitate. Initiate.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Beginning

Whimpering never kept a leaking vessel from foundering. Vigorously manning the pumps has. Get busy with your head and hands, not your chin.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Work

As I steamed into New York this month, exactly 20 years after first landing in America, the thought uppermost in my mind after visiting Europe was this: How mightily the United States has progressed in wealth and power, and how Europe has failed to keep step. America has exhibited qualities of a strong, industrious, generous-hearted, enthusiastic youth. Europe has exhibited signs of age…. America, the Youth, has not been eaten up with jealousies and bitterness and strife. Europe, the veteran, has.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: America

The more I move among workers and factories and other plants, the stronger I become convinced that it is advisable to have as (a company) president a practical man, preferably one who has risen from the very bottom of the ladder. Workmen, I find, have far more respect for such men than for collar-and-cuff executives knowing little or nothing about the different kinds of work which have to be done by the workers. Wherever circumstances call for placing a financier or lawyer or a papa’s son at the head of a large organization, he should be made chairman or some other title, but not president.
—B. C. Forbes

Tackle troubles one at a time. Get through one day at a time.
—B. C. Forbes

We sometimes receive letters from businessmen who say they are too busy to read. The man who is too busy to read is never likely to lead. The executive who aspires to success must keep himself well informed. His reading must not be confined to the reports of his own business laid on his desk, or to strictly trade journals, or to newspaper headlines. He must study what is going on throughout his own country and throughout the world. He must not remain blind to financial, industrial, economic trends, evolutions, revolutions.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Reading

May the founder of Forbes make a confession? The motive underlying the creation of Forbes was the furthering of better understanding between employers and employees, between the strong and the weak, between the high and the low, between the rich and the poor, between the have and the have-nots. It was foreseen years ago that, unless those who ruled were understandingly interpreted to those ruled, unless those who ruled could be induced to treat more humanely those whom they rule … this country would be in danger of suffering political and social upheavals. … .
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Writing

After visiting several of America’s most fashionable playgrounds, I have reached the conclusion that men who work hard enjoy life most. The men at such places can be divided into two classes, first, busy men of affairs … and, second, rich loafers. I was impressed by the obvious enjoyment corporation heads and other important executives were deriving from their vacation activities…. The idle rich fellows, on the other hand, although indulging in exactly the same activities, palpably were bored.
—B. C. Forbes

It is easier to start taxes than to stop them. A tax an inch long can easily become a yard long. That has been the history of the income tax. Would not the sales tax be likely to have a similar history (in the U.S.)? … Canadian newspapers report that an increase in the sales tax threatens to drive the Mackenzie King administration out of office. Canada began with a sales tax of 2%…. Starting this month the tax is 6%. The burden, in other words, has already been increased 200% … What the U.S. needs is not new taxes, is not more taxes, but fewer and lower taxes.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Taxes

Is America becoming decadent? Do we no longer regard our promises and pledges as sacred? … We promised to make peace with Germany only in conjunction with the Allies; but we brought forward a separate peace, demanding for ourselves all the advantages of the Treaty of Versailles but rejecting all the responsibilities embodied in the Treaty. It was America’s President who induced Europe to form a League of Nations; and then America was the first country that refused to joint it…. If these are not the symptoms of national decadency, what are they?
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: America

It quite often happens. A man bounds into sudden success, becomes obsessed by vanity, builds or buys a palace-and then has to close up the palace. The latest example is Clarence Saunders, who founded the Piggly Wiggly stores, launched a company, gathered in a lot of money, started building a million dollar home, tried to fight Wall Street at its own game of speculating in stocks, gloried in having cornered his stock, lost out, and now makes this announcement concerning his palace now under construction at Memphis: “I am going to nail up the place and lock the gates until I can make the money to complete it”.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Fame

Tell me how a young man spends his evenings and I will tell you how far he is likely to go in the world. The popular notion is that a youth’s progress depends upon how he acts during his working hours. It doesn’t. It depends far more upon how he utilizes his leisure…. If he spends it in harmless idleness, he is likely to be kept on the payroll, but that will be about all. If he diligently utilizes his own time … to fit himself for more responsible duties, then the greater responsibilities-and greater rewards-are almost certain to come to him.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Youth

It is a great mistake for presidents and other leading executives of organizations having branches throughout the country to chain themselves to their desks at headquarters and send out rigid instructions to those in charge of distant branches and offices. Because a man sits in a palatial office in New York or Chicago or Philadelphia or Detroit and draws a big salary, it does not necessarily follow that he knows better than the man on the spot what ought to be done…. Paul, Caesar, Napoleon did not merely sit at home and issue long-range instructions.
—B. C. Forbes

J.P. Morgan, then past 70, was asked by the son of an eminent father why he (Morgan) didn’t retire. “When did your father retire?” asked Mr. Morgan, without looking up from his desk. “In 1902.” “When did he die? Oh, at the end of 1904.” “Huh!” snapped Mr. Morgan, “If he had kept on working he would have been alive still. Work is God’s best medicine. It is God’s medicine for man.”
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Work

Many a man thinks he is patient when, in reality, he is indifferent.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Patience

If a pig could pray, it would pray for swill. What do you pray for?
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Prayer

Don’t forget until too late that the business of life is not business, but living.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Business

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