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
Has your work become very easy? Do you find you can do it with little effort? Has it ceased to impose any strain or fatigue upon you? Do you no longer feel loss of vitality after a long spell of it? Can you now do it as easy as water rolls off a duck’s back? If so, look out! Do some stock-taking. Examine your output…. Work done with little effort is likely to yield little result. Every job can be done excellently or indifferently. Excellence necessitates effort-hard, sustained, concentrated effort.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Work
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: Enthusiasm, Optimism, Success, Passion
Better to be occasionally cheated than perpetually suspicious.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Doubt, Deception
What one thing does the world need most today-apart, that is, from the all-inclusive thing we call righteousness? Aren’t you inclined to agree that what this old world needs is just the art of being kind? Every time I visit a factory or any other large business concern, I find myself trying to diagnose whether the atmosphere is one of kindliness or the reverse. And somehow, if there is palpably lacking that spirit of kindness, the owners … have fallen short of achieving 24-carat success no matter how imposing the financial balance sheet may be.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Kindness
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
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
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: Dedication, Commitment, Secrets of Success, Courage to Begin
Only he can be taught who is willing to learn.
—B. C. Forbes
Now, ideas are the raw material of progress. Everything first takes shape in the form of an idea. But an idea by itself is worth nothing. An idea, like a machine, must have power applied to it before it can accomplish anything. The men who have won fame and fortune through having an idea are those who devoted every ounce of their strength and every dollar they could muster to putting it into operation. Ford had a big idea, but he had to sweat and suffer and sacrifice in order to make it work.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Ideas
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
Tackle troubles one at a time. Get through one day at a time.
—B. C. Forbes
How you start is important, very important, but in the end it is how you finish that counts. It is easier to be a self-starter than a self-finisher. The victor in the race is not the one who dashes off swiftest but the one who leads at the finish. In the race for success, speed is less important than stamina. The sticker outlasts the sprinter in life’s race. In America we breed many hares but not so many tortoises.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Perseverance
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
Are you doing the kind of work you were built for, so that you can expect to be able to do very large amounts of that kind and thrive under it? Or are you doing a kind of which you can do comparatively little?
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Abilities, Work, Talents
A nation’s economic salvation does not lie in the amount of money its rich inhabitants can squander recklessly. A nation’s economic salvation lies in the amount of money its inhabitants can save and invest after providing themselves with all the necessaries and all the reasonable comforts of life.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Wealth
The man without religion is as a ship without a rudder.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Religion
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
Many concerns now make part or the whole of their dividends from by-products that formerly went to waste. How do we, as individuals, utilize our principal by-product? Our principal by-product is, of course, our leisure time. Many years of observation forces the conclusion that a man’s success or failure in life is determined as much by how he acts during his leisure as by how he acts during his work hours. Tell me how a young man spends his evenings and I will tell you how he is likely to spend the latter part of his life.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Leisure, Success
It is well for civilization that human beings constantly strive to gain greater and greater rewards, for it is this urge, this ambition, this aspiration that moves men and women to bestir themselves to rise to higher and higher achievement. Individual success is to be won in most instances by studying and diagnosing the kind of rewards human hearts seek today and are likely to seek tomorrow.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Achievements
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
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
To become an earner, be a learner.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Education
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
Which is more worthwhile earning: a large fortune or the esteem and gratitude of the nation? This question is prompted anew by the death of ex-Secretary of the Interior (Franklin K.) Lane. He remained in public service, doing most noble work, until his means became absolutely exhausted, and he died before having had the opportunity to reaccumulate any bank account…. He died leaving no estate whatsoever. Is what he did leave more to be desired, more to be coveted, than a fortune reaching into six or seven figures?
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Service
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
The British have their own conception of what constitutes the typical American. He must have a flavor of the Wild West about him. He must do spectacular things. He must not be punctilious about dignity, decorum and other refinements characteristic of the real British gentleman. The Yankee pictured by the Briton must be a bustler. If he is occasionally flagrantly indiscreet in speech and action, then he is so much more surely stamped the genuine article. The most typical American the British ever set their eyes on was, in their judgment, Theodore Roosevelt.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: America
Lord Northcliffe (British press magnate) once told me that he had discovered in America a tendency to install and worship system to such an extent that so much time was spent on system that little time was left for rounding up business to keep the system going. Is it not so with conferences? Isn’t the legitimate purpose of conferences being lost sight of? Just how far should businessmen go in spending hours in conferences with their colleagues and shut out, meanwhile, all communication with those from whom they derive their business? Executives cannot make a business pay by taking in one another’s washing.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Business
Frank W. Woolworth once told me that the turning-point in his career did not come until he was thrown flat on his back by illness. He was sure that his business would go to pieces during his long, enforced absence. Instead, he discovered that he had in his employ men who could overcome difficulties when given power to exercise initiative. After that Woolworth left many problems and difficulties to be solved by subordinates and turned his attention to big things.
—B. C. Forbes
Golf is an ideal diversion, but a ruinous disease
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Golf
The men who have done big things are those who were not afraid to attempt big things, who were not afraid to risk failure in order to gain success.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Success, Failure, Risk
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