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

To become an earner, be a learner.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Education

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

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

Any business arrangement that is not profitable to the other person will in the end prove unprofitable for you. The bargain that yields mutual satisfaction is the only one that is apt to be repeated.
—B. C. Forbes

Life is just an endless chain of judgements…. The more imperfect our judgement, the less perfect our success.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Decisions

The man of fixed ingrained principles who has mapped out a straight course, and has the courage and self-control to adhere to it, does not find life complex. Complexities are all of our own making.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Simplicity, Simple Living

Which class is happiest, the rich, the middle class or the poor? A very successful executive of a large organization touches upon this vital subject in a long letter to all his salesmen. He uses as his text a passage from Robinson Crusoe which included this: “My Father bid me observe it, and I should always find that the calamities of life were shared among the upper and lower part of mankind; but that the middle station had the fewest disasters, and were not exposed to so many vicissitudes as the higher or lower part of mankind”.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Class

Without self-respect there can be no genuine success. Success won at the cost of self-respect is not success? For what shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own self-respect.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Self-respect, Self Respect

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

The man who has done his level best, and who is conscious that he has done his best, is a success, even though the world may write him down a failure.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Best, Mistakes, Success, Failures

Every time I see an Erie Railroad engine bearing the name of its faithful driver a thrill goes through me, for I know that the man guiding it has won this rare honor by many years of the most loyal and efficient service. Who will argue that only public men and corporation heads are entitled to have their names emblazoned on the scroll of honor? All workmen care about is money, you say? Wrong. Workers are made of exactly the same stuff as generals or senators or presidents or governors or industrial leaders. It is just as fitting to honor the worthiest of our wage earners as it is to honor others.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Pride

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

Mediocre men wait for opportunity to come to them. Strong, able, alert men go after opportunity.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Opportunity

How foolish you would be to start on a journey without knowing where you wanted to go. Have you ever sat down and seriously drawn up a plan for your life? Have you ever deliberately mapped out where you want to go during your life’s journey? Now, isn’t your life infinitely more important to you than any journey you may take? Why, therefore, not devote the most earnest effort to plan your life, to set for yourself a goal? We are now at the New Year season. Isn’t this a peculiarly appropriate time to look ahead, to indulge in solemn thinking, to formulate life plans, to lay down a definite course to follow?
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Goals

Jealousy is an inner consciousness of one’s own inferiority. it is a mental cancer.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Jealousy, Envy

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

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: Self-reliance, Responsibility, Confidence, Blame

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

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

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

There is more genuine joy in climbing the hill of success, even though sweat may be spent and toes may be stubbed, than in aimlessly sliding down the path to failure. If a straight, honorable path has been chosen, the gaining of the summit yields lasting satisfaction. The morass of failure, if reached through laziness, indifference or other avoidable fault, yields nothing but ignominy and sorrow for self and family and friends.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Success

If your heart is right, everything will turn out right.
—B. C. Forbes

Many of the most successful men I have known have never grown up. They have retained bubbling-over boyishness. They have relished wit, they have indulged in humor. They have not allowed “dignity” to depress them into moroseness. Youthfulness of spirit is twin brother of optimism, and optimism is the stuff of which American business success is fashioned. Resist growing up.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Success, Passion, Enthusiasm, Optimism

Better to be occasionally cheated than perpetually suspicious.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Deception, Doubt

It is when things go hardest, when life becomes most trying, that there is greatest need for having a fixed goal. When few comforts come from without, it is all the more necessary to have a fount to draw from within.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Goals, Aspirations

I played golf some time ago with John D. Rockefeller. The other day, I played with Charles M. Schwab…. Both played exactly the same. Neither overreached (or) tried to do more than he was capable of…. Most golfers, like most businessmen, swat the ball with all their might and trust more or less to luck as to the result…. Now, both Rockefeller and Schwab hit a straight ball nine times out of ten. In fact, in the first 17 holes I played with Schwab, he didn’t foozle a single shot. I could drive a ball 25 to 50 yards further than he, but quite often it flew wild. The result was that Schwab licked me decisively.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Sports

Are your desires purely selfish? Do your tastes run to a grand home, automobiles, fine clothes, an abundance of amusements, and so forth? If so, look around you at people who have such things in superabundance. Are they any happier, do you think, than you are? Are they any better morally? Are they any stronger physically? Are they better liked by their friends than you are by your friends? … Carnegie said, Millionaires rarely smile. This is substantially true.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Wealth

A business like an automobile, has to be driven, in order to get results
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Business

Difficulties should act as a tonic. They should spur us to greater exertion.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Difficulties, Difficulty, Adversity

In this democracy there are no titles. Yet there is no land on the face of the earth where titles are more freely bestowed-or arrogated. If a man isn’t known as Judge or Colonel or Doctor or Professor or General or Governor or Senator or Congressman or Ambassador or Secretary or Captain or Chief, then the chances are that he is described as some kind of a king. We have our Tobacco Kings, our Steel Kings, our Lumber Kings, our Chemical Kings, our Automobile Kings, our Coal Kings, our Traction Kings, and doubtless we will shortly have our Bootlegger Kings.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Society

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