Bertie Charles Forbes (1880–1954) was a Scottish-born American financial journalist and editor. Forbes was the founder of the Forbes business magazine and publishing empire.
Born a poor country boy near Aberdeen in Scotland, Forbes started work as a printer’s apprentice at age 14. He soon became a financial journalist in England, and progressively graduated into the roles of reporter, editor, and publisher first in South Africa and then in New York. In 1916, he successfully started the Forbes magazine at age 36 and became famous for writing profiles of business leaders. By 1946, Forbes reached a circulation of 100,000 and was popular not only for its analyses of business and economic trends but also for Forbes’s style of business journalism.
Forbes wrote several books, including Finance, Business and the Business of Life (1915,) Men Who Are Making America (1917,) Forbes Epigrams (1922,) and 101 Unusual Experiences (1952.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by B. C. Forbes
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
A magazine editor recently asked me to sit down on my 40th birthday and write an article on the most important things I had learned in my first 40 years. I told him that the chief thing I had learned was that the copybook maxims are true, but that too many people forget this once they go out into the heat and hustle and bustle of the battle of life and only realize their truth once one foot is beginning to slip into the grave. The man who has won millions at the cost of his conscience is a failure.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Conscience, Integrity
The way to make a true friend is to be one Friendship implies loyalty, esteem, cordiality, sympathy, affection, readiness to aid, to help, to stick, to fight for, if need be. The real friend is he or she who can share all our sorrows and double our joys Radiate friendship and it will return sevenfold.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Friendship
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, Giving, Service, Selfishness
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
Many men who do creditable things refuse to let it be known. This is a mistake. While we all admire modesty, nevertheless there is a great national need to do everything possible to bring home to the rank and file of the people that all employers and all wealthy men are not grinding, mercenary, selfish skinflints, but that many of them take delight in doing helpful things for others … Shortcomings of employers are constantly paraded. Why not let the public become acquainted with the better side which most present-day employers possess?
—B. C. Forbes
Work is the meat of life, pleasure the dessert.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Work
The incontestable truth is that America has been built up by optimists, not by pessimists, but by men possessing courage, confidence in the nation’s destiny, by men willing to adventure, to shoulder risks terrifying to the timid.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Optimism
Difficulties defeat the weak, develop the strong.
—B. C. Forbes
It isn’t success if it costs you the companionship and chumminess and love of your children. Very often busy, wealthy men of momentous affairs discover too late that they have sacrificed the finest thing in life, the affection of their family. Let me relate an incident (containing) a priceless suggestion for many ultra-busy businessmen. Frank L. Baker, prominent public utility executive, told a friend that he was going to give his young son an unusual Christmas present. I am going to write my boy a letter telling him I am going to give him an hour of my time every day. Alas, Mr. Baker died two weeks later.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Family
If a pig could pray, it would pray for swill. What do you pray for?
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Prayer
Tackle troubles one at a time. Get through one day at a time.
—B. C. Forbes
Thomas Edison reads not for entertainment but to increase his store of knowledge. He sucks in information as eagerly as the bee sucks honey from flowers. The whole world, so to speak, pours its wisdom into his mind. He regards it as a criminal waste of time to go through the slow and painful ordeal of ascertaining things for one’s self if these same things have already been ascertained and made available by others. In Edison’s mind knowledge is power.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Science
To become an earner, be a learner.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Education
The fittest, not the richest, make the most enviable mark. Pampered sons of plutocrats may shine for a time in society, but not in the world of affairs and of service unless they rip off their coats and get to work early and stay late. To be born with a golden spoon in the mouth is more of a handicap than a help in attaining worthwhile success in this age.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Success
How we love to blame others for our misfortunes! Almost every individual who has lost money in stock speculation has on the tip of his tongue an explanation which he trots out to show that it wasn’t his own fault at all … Hardly one loser has the manliness to say frankly, “I was wrong”.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Confidence, Blame, Responsibility, Self-reliance
I don’t feel myself that I Know it all, but I have enough conceit to be successful. That observation was made by a businessman in his 30s who was making notable headway, although his path bristled with difficulties. Business places no premiums on shrinking violets. Employers prefer men who have self-assurance, forcefulness, go-aheadness, men who know their jobs and know that they know it.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Pride
Many a man has walked up to the opportunity for which he has long been preparing himself, looked it full in the face, and then begun to get cold feet … when it comes to betting on yourself and your power to do the thing you know you must do or write yourself down a failure, you’re a chicken-livered coward if you hesitate.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Secrets of Success, Dedication, Commitment, Courage to Begin
Jealousy is an inner consciousness of one’s own inferiority. it is a mental cancer.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Jealousy, Envy
It can be set down as a broad, general principle that we cannot indulge in idleness and abundance during both the first and second half of our life. Study, application, industry, enthusiasm while we are young usually enable us to enjoy life when we grow older. But unless we toil and strive and earn all we can in the first half, the second half of our life is liable to bring disappointment, discomfort, distress. The time to put forth effort is when we are most able to do it, namely, in the years of our greatest strength. The law of compensation hasn’t ceased to function.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Aging
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
Ugliness, squalor are breeding grounds for revolution. Beauty is conducive to tranquility, happiness. Beautifying of homes and places of worship began with the dawn of civilization. Beautifying of workplaces is only in its infancy. Yet, since men normally spend more than half of their waking hours at work, surely it is important that adequate attention be devoted to elevating their working environment, whether office or factory, foundry or machine shop, mine or warehouse. Beautiful surroundings subtly encourage beautiful living. Drab surroundings, bad air, bad light, evoke bad reactions.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Work
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
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
Difficulties should act as a tonic. They should spur us to greater exertion.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Adversity, Difficulty, Difficulties
The bell of public opinion is today making the Morgan-Rockefeller-Vanderbilt class jump. Nor are the strongest of our corporations immune. The railroads have had to jump pretty lively, and certain gigantic industrial combinations are also being put through their paces.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Opinions
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
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
Judgement can be acquired only by acute observation, by actual experience in the school of life, by ceaseless alertness to learn from others, by study of the activities of men who have made notable marks, by striving to analyze the everyday play of causes and effects, by constant study of human nature.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Role models
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
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