William A. Feather (1889–1981) was an American publisher and author, based in Cleveland, Ohio. Born in Jamestown, New York, Feather relocated with his family to Cleveland in 1903. After earning a degree from Western Reserve University in 1910, he began working as a reporter for the Cleveland Press. In 1916, he established the William Feather Magazine. In addition to writing for and publishing that magazine, and writing for other magazines as H.L. Mencken’s The American Mercury, he ran a successful printing business, and wrote several books.
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Here is the secret of inspiration: Tell yourself that thousands and tens of thousands of people, not very intelligent and certainly no more intelligent than the rest of us, have mastered problems as difficult as those that now baffle you.
—William Feather
Topics: Inspiration, Inspirational
Of all the young men in America only a few hundred can get into major league baseball, and of these only a handful in a decade can get into the Hall of Fame. So it goes in all human activity … Some become multimillionaires and chairmen of the board, and some of us must be content to play baseball at company picnics or manage a credit union without pay.
—William Feather
Topics: Acceptance, Realization, Awareness, Expectations, Perfection, Realistic Expectations
Successful salesman, authors, executives and workmen of every sort need patience. The great liability of youth is not inexperience but impatience.
—William Feather
Topics: Patience
Concentrate on your job and you will forget your other troubles
—William Feather
Topics: Trouble
Back of ninety-nine out of one-hundred assertions that a thing cannot be done is nothing, but the unwillingness to do it.
—William Feather
Topics: Risk
Mistakes occur when a man is over-worked or over-confident.
—William Feather
Topics: Mistakes
Next to doing a good job yourself, the greatest joy is in having someone else do a first-class job under your direction.
—William Feather
Topics: Leadership, Mentoring
The philosophy behind much advertising is based on the old observation that every man is really two men—the man he is and the man he wants to be.
—William Feather
Some people are making such thorough preparation for rainy days that they aren’t enjoying today’s sunshine.
—William Feather
Topics: Preparation, Fate, The Present
Everybody loves to find fault, it gives a feeling of superiority.
—William Feather
Topics: Faults
The happiest people are those who are too busy to notice whether they are or not.
—William Feather
Topics: Action, Busy, Happiness
Business is always interfering with pleasure – but it makes other pleasures possible.
—William Feather
Topics: Pleasure
Life begins at 40—but so do fallen arches, rheumatism, faulty eyesight, and the tendency to tell a story to the same person, three or four times.
—William Feather
Topics: Aging, Age
Blow your own horn loud. If you succeed, people will forgive your noise; if you fail, they’ll forget it.
—William Feather
Topics: Self-Discovery
A man must not deny his manifest abilities, for that is to evade his obligations.
—William Feather
Topics: Ability
If you don’t take it for granted that the other man will do his job, you’re not an executive.
—William Feather
Laziness is the one common deficiency in mankind that blocks the establishment of a perfect world in which everyone leads a happy life.
—William Feather
Topics: Laziness
We all know that the nation can’t divide more than the people produce, but as individuals we try to get more than our share and that’s how we get ahead.
—William Feather
Topics: Achievements
Work is the best method devised for killing time.
—William Feather
A good man likes a hard boss. I don’t mean a nagging boss or a grouchy boss. I mean a boss who insists on things being done right and on time; a boss who is watching things closely enough so that he knows a good job from a poor one. Nothing is more discouraging to a good man than a boss who is not on the job, and who does not know whether things are going well or badly.
—William Feather
Topics: Leadership
Once you have sold a customer, make sure he is satisfied with your goods. Stay with him until the goods are used up or worn out. Your product may be of such long life that you will never sell him again, but he will sell you and your product to his friends.
—William Feather
Unless a man has been kicked around a little, you can’t really depend upon him to amount to anything.
—William Feather
Topics: Difficulties, Adversity
Women lie about their age; men lie about their income.
—William Feather
Topics: Men, Men & Women, Women, Lies
He isn’t a real boss until he has trained subordinates to shoulder most of his responsibilities
—William Feather
Topics: Challenges
The primary asset of any business is its organization.
—William Feather
Topics: Organization
Unnecessary hustle is one of the American follies. We hustle at both work and play, and consequently enjoy neither to the utmost.
—William Feather
Topics: Action
The prizes go to those who meet emergencies successfully. And the way to meet emergencies is to do each daily task the best we can; to act as though the eye of opportunity were always upon us. In the hundred-yard race the winter doesn’t cross the tape line a dozen strides ahead of the field. He wins by inches. So we find it in ordinary business life. The big things that come our way are seldom the result of long thought or careful planning, but rather they are the fruit of seed planted in the daily routine of our work.
—William Feather
Topics: One Step at a Time, Opportunities
The way to get ahead is to start now. If you start now, you will know a lot next year that you don’t know now and that you would not have known next year if you had waited.
—William Feather
Topics: Inaction, Progress, Getting Going, Procrastination
Experience seems to be the only thing of any value that’s widely distributed.
—William Feather
Topics: Experience
Plenty of people miss their share of happiness, not because they never found it, but because they didn’t stop to enjoy it.
—William Feather
Topics: Apathy, People, Happiness
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