Bertie Charles Forbes (1880–1954) was a Scottish-born American financial journalist and editor. Forbes was the founder of the Forbes business magazine and publishing empire.
Born a poor country boy near Aberdeen in Scotland, Forbes started work as a printer’s apprentice at age 14. He soon became a financial journalist in England, and progressively graduated into the roles of reporter, editor, and publisher first in South Africa and then in New York. In 1916, he successfully started the Forbes magazine at age 36 and became famous for writing profiles of business leaders. By 1946, Forbes reached a circulation of 100,000 and was popular not only for its analyses of business and economic trends but also for Forbes’ style of business journalism.
Forbes wrote several books, including Finance, Business and the Business of Life (1915,) Men Who Are Making America (1917,) Forbes Epigrams (1922,) and 101 Unusual Experiences (1952.)
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Thomas Edison reads not for entertainment but to increase his store of knowledge. He sucks in information as eagerly as the bee sucks honey from flowers. The whole world, so to speak, pours its wisdom into his mind. He regards it as a criminal waste of time to go through the slow and painful ordeal of ascertaining things for one’s self if these same things have already been ascertained and made available by others. In Edison’s mind knowledge is power.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Science
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
Topics: Work, Talents, Abilities
He is a wise man who seeks by every legitimate means to make all the money he can honestly, for money can do so many worthwhile things in this world, not merely for one’s self but for others. But he is an unmitigated fool who imagines for a moment that it is more important to make the money than to make it honestly. One of the advantages of possessing money is that it facilitates one’s independence and mental attitude. The man head over heels in debt is more slave than independent.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Money
Triumph often is nearest when defeat seems inescapable.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Resolve, Perseverance, Endurance
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
Topics: Opportunity
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
Topics: Managing Worries, Worry
Whimpering never kept a leaking vessel from foundering. Vigorously manning the pumps has. Get busy with your head and hands, not your chin.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Work
You have no idea how big the other fellow’s troubles are.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Reality, Opportunities
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
Topics: Optimism
The man who is intent on making the most of his opportunities is too busy to bother about luck.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Luck
Jealousy… is a mental cancer.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Jealousy
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
Topics: Failure, Risk, Success
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
Topics: Honesty
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
Topics: Simple Living, Simplicity
Search and you will find that at the base and birth of every great business organization was an enthusiast, a man consumed with earnestness of purpose, with confidence in his powers, with faith in the worthwhileness of his endeavors.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Confidence, Assurance
Money, or even power, can never yield happiness unless it be accompanied by the goodwill of others.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Happiness, Money, Success
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
Topics: Action
We must learn that to enjoy happiness we must conscientiously and continuously seek to spread happiness. Selfishness is suicidal to happiness.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Happiness
Diamonds are only lumps of coal that stuck to their jobs.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Persistence, Perseverance, Resolve, Endurance, Jobs, Wealth
Jealousy is an inner consciousness of one’s own inferiority. it is a mental cancer.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Jealousy, Envy
Opportunity rarely knocks on your door. Knock rather on opportunity’s door if you ardently wish to enter.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Opportunity
Many concerns now make part or the whole of their dividends from by-products that formerly went to waste. How do we, as individuals, utilize our principal by-product? Our principal by-product is, of course, our leisure time. Many years of observation forces the conclusion that a man’s success or failure in life is determined as much by how he acts during his leisure as by how he acts during his work hours. Tell me how a young man spends his evenings and I will tell you how he is likely to spend the latter part of his life.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Success, Leisure
The man without religion is as a ship without a rudder.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Religion
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
Topics: Commitment, Dedication
Life is just an endless chain of judgements…. The more imperfect our judgement, the less perfect our success.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Decisions
Lady Luck generally woos those who earnestly, enthusiastically, unremittingly woo her.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Luck
Many a man thinks he is patient when, in reality, he is indifferent.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Patience
Tell me how a young man spends his evenings and I will tell you how far he is likely to go in the world. The popular notion is that a youth’s progress depends upon how he acts during his working hours. It doesn’t. It depends far more upon how he utilizes his leisure…. If he spends it in harmless idleness, he is likely to be kept on the payroll, but that will be about all. If he diligently utilizes his own time … to fit himself for more responsible duties, then the greater responsibilities-and greater rewards-are almost certain to come to him.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Youth
What you have outside you counts less than what you have inside you.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Self-Discovery, Bravery, Courage
There is more genuine joy in climbing the hill of success, even though sweat may be spent and toes may be stubbed, than in aimlessly sliding down the path to failure. If a straight, honorable path has been chosen, the gaining of the summit yields lasting satisfaction. The morass of failure, if reached through laziness, indifference or other avoidable fault, yields nothing but ignominy and sorrow for self and family and friends.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Success
The man who has done his level best, and who is conscious that he has done his best, is a success, even though the world may write him down a failure.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Mistakes, Best, Failures, Success
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
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
Topics: Success
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.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Value
Real riches are the riches possessed inside.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Riches, Wealth
The human being who lives only for himself finally reaps nothing but unhappiness. Selfishness corrodes. Unselfishness ennobles, satisfies. Don’t put off the joy derivable from doing helpful, kindly things for others.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Service, Selfishness, Kindness, Giving
Ambition means longing and striving to attain some purpose. Therefore, there are as many brands of ambition as there are human aspirations.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Goals, Aspirations
Difficulties should act as a tonic. They should spur us to greater exertion.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Adversity, Difficulty, Difficulties
Judgement 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
Topics: Role models
It is when things go hardest, when life becomes most trying, that there is greatest need for having a fixed goal. When few comforts come from without, it is all the more necessary to have a fount to draw from within.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Aspirations, Goals
Mediocre men wait for opportunity to come to them. Strong, able, alert men go after opportunity.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Opportunity
Better to be occasionally cheated than perpetually suspicious.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Deception, Doubt
The real friend is he or she who can share all our sorrow and double our joys.
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Friendship
J.P. Morgan, then past 70, was asked by the son of an eminent father why he (Morgan) didn’t retire. “When did your father retire?” asked Mr. Morgan, without looking up from his desk. “In 1902.” “When did he die? Oh, at the end of 1904.” “Huh!” snapped Mr. Morgan, “If he had kept on working he would have been alive still. Work is God’s best medicine. It is God’s medicine for man.”
—B. C. Forbes
Topics: Work
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
Topics: Determination
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