B. C. Forbes Quotes
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How you start is important, but it is how you finish that counts. In the race for success, speed is less important than stamina. The sticker outlasts the sprinter.
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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.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Temporary release from work, through vacations, becomes more welcome, more pleasurable, even more necessary, as we grow older.
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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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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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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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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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Life is just an endless chain of judgements. . . . The more imperfect our judgement, the less perfect our success.
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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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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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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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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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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.
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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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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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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.