B. C. Forbes Quotes

65 Sourced Quotes

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
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
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
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
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
Call the roll in your memory of conspicuously successful [business] giants and, if you know anything about their careers, you will be struck by the fact that almost every one of them encountered inordinate difficulties sufficient to crush all but the gamest of spirits. Edison went hungry many times before he became famous.

B. C. Forbes
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
The human being who lives only for himself finally reaps nothing but unhappiness. Selfishness corrodes. Unselfishness ennobles, satisfies.

B. C. Forbes
Turn resolutely to work, to recreation, or in any case to physical exercise till you are so tired you can't help going to sleep, and when you wake up you won't want to worry.

B. C. Forbes
The fellow who isn't fired with enthusiasm is apt to be fired.

B. C. Forbes
The incontestable truth is that America has been built up by optimists, not by pessimists, but by men possessing courage, confidence in the nation's destiny, by men willing to adventure, to shoulder risks terrifying to the timid.

B. C. Forbes
Acting without thinking is like shooting without aiming.

B. C. Forbes
The real friend is he or she who can share all our sorrow and double our joys.

B. C. Forbes
Cheerfulness is among the most laudable virtues. It gains you the good will and friendship of others. It blesses those who practice it and those upon whom it is bestowed.

B. C. Forbes
No man can fight his way to the top and stay at the top without exercising the fullest measure of grit, courage, determination, resolution. Every man who gets anywhere does so because he has first firmly resolved to progress in the world and then has enough stick-to-it-tiveness to transform his resolution into reality. Without resolution, no man can win any worthwhile place among his fellow men.

B. C. Forbes
Justice must be blind to the hardness or softness of a man's hands, as well as to the leanness or fatness of his pocketbook

B. C. Forbes
The bargain that yields mutual satisfaction is the only one that is apt to be repeated.

B. C. Forbes
The victors of the battles of tomorrow will be those who can best harness thought to action. From office boy to statesman, the prizes will be for those who most effectively exert their brains, who take deep, earnest and studious counsel of their minds, who stamp themselves as thinkers.

B. C. Forbes
Genius is often a short way of spelling hard work. Poverty, obscurity, struggle and ambition formed the foundation for many careers of transcendent achievement. Few marks are made in the world's history by eight-hour-day men.... Sir Joshua Reynolds had but one maxim for success: Work, work, work. Is not rigid and continuous training necessary for the making of strong athletes? Hard work is not fatal to real success. Vouloir c'est pouvoir.

B. C. Forbes
Upon our children-how they are taught-rests the fate-or fortune-of tomorrow's world.

B. C. Forbes
A willing, cheerful worker, with his heart in his job, will turn out more work and more satisfactory work in 44 hours than an unwilling worker, dissatisfied with his conditions, will turn out in 54 hours. It is good business, therefore, for every employer to go as far as he possibly can in reaching a schedule agreeable to his people.

B. C. Forbes
To succeed, we must have the will to succeed, we must have stamina, determination, backbone, perseverance, self-reliance, and faith.

B. C. Forbes
The man who has won millions at the cost of his conscience is a failure.

B. C. Forbes
Search and you will find that at the base and birth of every great business organization was an enthusiast, man consumed with earnestness of purpose, with confidence in his powers, with faith in the worthwhileness of his endeavors.

B. C. Forbes
Madame Curie didn't stumble upon radium by accident. She searched and experimented and sweated and suffered years before she found it. Success rarely is an accident.

B. C. Forbes
That which is useless dies. Animals that fail to serve some useful purpose in the scheme of things slowly but surely become extinct. Let any part of the human body cease to perform its ordained function, and it withers-as when an arm is kept long in a sling. This same decree, that nothing useless is permitted to survive, runs through the mind of the industrial world.

B. C. Forbes
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
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
It is when things go hardest, when life becomes most trying, that there is greatest need for having a fixed goal.

B. C. Forbes
Don't forget until too late that the business of life is not business but living.

B. C. Forbes