B. C. Forbes Quotes

65 Sourced Quotes

If you don't drive your business, you will be driven out of business.

B. C. Forbes
Better to be occasionally cheated than perpetually suspicious.

B. C. Forbes
History has demonstrated that the most notable winners usually encountered heartbreaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeats.

B. C. Forbes
Jealousy is an inner consciousness of one's own inferiority. It is a mental cancer.

B. C. Forbes
Many a man thinks he is patient when, in reality, he is indifferent.

B. C. Forbes
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
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
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
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.... Radiate friendship and it will return sevenfold.

B. C. Forbes
Backboneless employees are too ready to attribute the success of others to luck. Luck is usually the fruit of intelligent application. The man who is intent on making the most of his opportunities is too busy to bother about luck.

B. C. Forbes
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
Judgment 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
Honesty is the cornerstone of character. The honest man or woman seeks not merely to avoid criminal or illegal acts, but to be scrupulously fair, upright, fearless in both action and expression. Honesty pays dividends both in dollars and in peace of mind.

B. C. Forbes
Some people are so methodical that that is all they are or ever will be.

B. C. Forbes
Whenever possible, I like to have the supreme head of a company show me over the works. It is extremely illuminating to note the attitude of workers towards their boss, and equally interesting to note the attitude towards the workers. It is tragic to notice how many chief executives of large concerns are absolutely unknown, even by sight, to the rank and file of their workers.

B. C. Forbes
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
It is the hard-boiled employer, not the soft-hearted species, that incites most of our strikes and does most ot endanger the harmonious progress of democracy.

B. C. Forbes
Opportunity can benefit no man who has not fitted himself to seize it and use it. Opportunity woos the worthy, shuns the unworthy. Prepare yourself to grasp opportunity, and opportunity is likely to come your way. It is not so fickle, capricious and unreasoning as some complain.

B. C. Forbes
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
The Christmas spirit brings home to us-or should bring home to us-the profound Biblical truth that it is more blessed to give than to receive. Anything which inspires unselfishness makes for our ennoblement. Christmas does that. I am all for Christmas.

B. C. Forbes
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
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
There are two brands of discontent: the brand that merely fosters greed and snarling and back-biting, and the brand that inspires greater and greater effort to reach the desired goal. Which is your brand?

B. C. Forbes
Success consists of being and doing, not simply accumulating.

B. C. Forbes
If the United States is to produce a nation of investors-as we must if we are to gain financial world-leadership-it is imperative that boards of directors be so constituted as to adequately represent the interests and inspire the complete confidence of investors of moderate substance.

B. C. Forbes
Our future and our fate lie in our wills more than in our hands, for our hands are but the instruments of our wills.

B. C. Forbes
A word of appreciation often can accomplish what nothing else could accomplish.

B. C. Forbes
First make sure that what you aspire to accomplish is worth accomplishing, and then throw your whole vitality into it. What's worth doing is worth doing well. And to do anything well, wheter it be typing a letter or drawing up an agreement involving millions, we must give not only our hands to the doing of it, but our brains, our enthusiasm, the best - all that is in us. The task to which you dedicate yourself can never become a drudgery.

B. C. Forbes
Enthusiasm is the electric current that keeps the engine of life going at top speed. Enthusiasm is the very propeller of progress.

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

B. C. Forbes