Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Malcolm S. Forbes (American Publisher)

Malcolm Stevenson Forbes (1919–90) was an American business leader and socialite. The owner-publisher of the Forbes magazine 1957–90, he was notorious for his opulent lifestyle and his self-glorification.

Born in Brooklyn, New York City, Forbes inherited his wealth from his father, B. C. Forbes, who launched Malcolm at the Fairfield Times newspaper as owner and publisher only days after his matriculation from Princeton University.

After serving in the Army during World War II, Malcolm became a state senator in New Jersey 1951–58 and contested unsuccessfully for governor his 1957. When his father died in 1954, Malcolm Forbes became publisher and editor-in-chief of Forbes. Under his direction, the glossy business magazine flourished from a circulation of 100,000 to 720,000. He also founded the Nation’s Heritage magazine and a journal for art lovers called Egg.

A well-known collector, Forbes developed properties in California, Maine, and Fiji, and owned a château in Normandy, a mansion in London, an island in the South Seas, a palace in Tangier, Morocco, and collections of motorcycles, Peter Carl Fabergé imperial Easter eggs, and Oriental paintings. He set six world records in hot air ballooning.

Branded as a man who adored the spotlight, Forbes was well known for his extravagant lifestyle. He earned the nickname “the happiest millionaire.” On his last birthday, he incited controversy by giving a $2 million party, for which he flew some 1,000 guests to Tangier, Morocco. Not only that, he went out of his way to make sure that everyone who had not been invited knew what they had missed.

Forbes wrote More Than I Dreamed: A Lifetime of Collecting (1989.) A famous biography is Christopher Winans’s Malcolm Forbes: The Man Who Had Everything (1990.)

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Malcolm S. Forbes

The ultimate high: A man’s abilities equaling his opinion of’em.
—Malcolm S. Forbes
Topics: Ability

Accepting blame when it’s not really due sometimes makes the point better.
—Malcolm S. Forbes
Topics: Blame

Those carried away by power are soon carried away.
—Malcolm S. Forbes
Topics: Power

In business, there’s such a thing as an invaluable person, but no such thing as an indispensable one.
—Malcolm S. Forbes
Topics: Business

Isn’t it fortunate how selective our recollections usually are.
—Malcolm S. Forbes
Topics: Memory

As you get older there shouldn’t be anything you won’t try. The payoff is that you open up whole new avenues that are fun. It’s a misinterpretation of life to live it only in preparation for the next one. To subordinate the one you’ve got to an indefinite next round is foolish. It’s a waste of this life not to live this life. What’s next is anybody’s guess.
—Malcolm S. Forbes
Topics: Aging

All work and no play makes jack. With enough jack, Jack needn’t be a dull boy.
—Malcolm S. Forbes
Topics: Money

Compliment others on the virtues they have; and they’re not half as pleased as being complimented for the ones they don’t have.
—Malcolm S. Forbes
Topics: Virtue

The ultimate in futility is owning important jewelry. Insurers often insist on the wearing of paste replicas because necks with real rocks around ’em risk wringing.
—Malcolm S. Forbes
Topics: Security

If you don’t know what you want to do, it’s harder to do it.
—Malcolm S. Forbes
Topics: Goals

If you have a job without aggravations, you don’t have a job.
—Malcolm S. Forbes
Topics: Acceptance, Faces, Work, Jobs, Face

Most oldsters are fascinated by the Future, while the young love to look back to earlier days, especially their own.
—Malcolm S. Forbes
Topics: Generations

At the heart of any good business is a chief executive officer with one.
—Malcolm S. Forbes
Topics: Heart

More often than not, things and people are as they appear.
—Malcolm S. Forbes
Topics: Appearance

The art of conversation lies in listening.
—Malcolm S. Forbes
Topics: Listening

One worthwhile task carried to a successful conclusion is worth half-a-hundred half-finished tasks.
—Malcolm S. Forbes
Topics: Time Management

TV cassette players will take ever-bigger bites out of the regular TV-viewing audience, moviegoers, sports and other event-attending spectators. Cassette players are now the hottest thing on the entertainment scene since popcorn… Movie cassettes are improving the margin of profit for more and more Hollywood hits that don’t at the box office. And of course, there is the home video camera… The only limitation is the viewer’s time. And there, my friends, is the rub of the matter. With only one pair of eyes and a 24-hour day, tape-popping addicts have less and less time for going out to pay to see things.
—Malcolm S. Forbes
Topics: Media

A winner must first know what losing’s like.
—Malcolm S. Forbes
Topics: Winning

Anyone who says businessmen deal only in facts, not fiction, has never read old five-year projections.
—Malcolm S. Forbes
Topics: Business

Things there are no solution to: Inflation, bureaucracy & dandruff.
—Malcolm S. Forbes
Topics: Life

When you cease to dream you cease to live.
—Malcolm S. Forbes
Topics: Dreams

Listening to advice often accomplishes far more than heeding it.
—Malcolm S. Forbes
Topics: Advice

I heard one wheel describe another: “He’s absolutely copeless”.
—Malcolm S. Forbes
Topics: Life

A man who enjoys responsibility usually gets it. A man who merely likes exercising authority usually loses it.
—Malcolm S. Forbes
Topics: Responsibility, Power

If you don’t watch your figure, you’ll have more figure to watch.
—Malcolm S. Forbes
Topics: Food

Looking the part helps get the chance to fill it. But if you fill the part, it matters not if you look it.
—Malcolm S. Forbes
Topics: Appearance

If you have no critics you’ll likely have no success.
—Malcolm S. Forbes
Topics: Criticism

A little while ago I visited Omaha Beach for the second time in my life. In the intervening 26 years, nearly 20,000 tides had come and gone and little remains visible of the greatest military landing in man’s history of endless warring. What’s to be seen is mostly in a superb museum and a panoramic cemetery. The cemetery memorializes with dignity and grandeur the event and the dead, and moves one deeply. Before they die less precipitously and/or in lesser purpose, Americans who can should visit World War II’s Normandy Beach. Such seeing and remembering helps a man’s perspective.
—Malcolm S. Forbes
Topics: War

To live your life in the fear of losing it is to lose the point of life.
—Malcolm S. Forbes
Topics: Anxiety, Life, Fear

The difference between men and boys is the price of their toys.
—Malcolm S. Forbes
Topics: Man, Men

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