B. C. Forbes Quotes
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Many of the most successful men I have known have never grown up. Youthfulness of spirit is the twin brother of optimism... Resist growing up!
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The Bible says, 'Where there is no vision, the people perish.' Have you a vision? And are you undeviatingly pressing and pushing toward its accomplishment? Dreaming alone will not get you there. Mix your dreams with determination and action.
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It is not a case of whether we want to wash our hands of Europe or want to help her to regain her feet. The troubles of Europe have been laid on our doorstep, so to speak, and will plague us, if we do nothing to cure them, whether we like it or not.
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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.
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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.
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Whimpering never kept a leaking vessel from foundering. Vigorously manning the pumps has. Get busy with your head and hands, not your chin.
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Enthusiasm is the electric current that keeps the engine of life going at top speed. Enthusiasm is the very propeller of progress.
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Temporary release from work, through vacations, becomes more welcome, more pleasurable, even more necessary, as we grow older.
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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.
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I resolve for 1920 to sit down all by myself and take a personal stock-taking once a month. To be no more charitable in viewing my own faults than I am an viewing the faults of others. To face the facts candidly and courageously. To address myself carefully, prayerfully, to remedying defects.
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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.
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How many men I know who are earning dollars aplenty, but who are really earning little of what counts. They are so overwhelmingly engrossed in business that they get nothing from their dollars. The Juggernaut of dollar-making has crushed out of them every capacity for genuine enjoyment, every grace, every unselfish sentiment and instinct.
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We must learn that to enjoy happiness we must conscientiously and continuously seek to spread happiness. Selfishness is suicidal to happiness.
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Enthusiasm is the parent of enterprise. Search and you will find that at the base and birth of every great business organization was an enthusiast, someone consumed with earnestness of purpose, with confidence in their powers, with faith in the worthwhileness of their endeavors.
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It is when things go hardest, when life becomes most trying, that there is greatest need for having a fixed goal.
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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.
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Opportunity rarely knocks on your door. Knock rather on opportunity's door if you ardently wish to enter.
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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?
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A price has to be paid for success. Almost invariably those who have reached the summits worked harder and longer, studied and planned more assiduously, practiced more self- denial, overcame more difficulties than those of us who have not risen so far.
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The things that are most worthwhile in life are really those within the reach of almost every normal human being who cares to seek them out.
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I have known not a few men who, after reaching the summits of business success, found themselves miserable on attaining retirement age. They were so exclusively engrossed in their day to day affairs that they had no time for friend making.
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To succeed, we must have the will to succeed, we must have stamina, determination, backbone, perseverance, self-reliance, and faith.
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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.
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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.