110+ B. C. Forbes Quotes On Education, Business And Success

B. C. Forbes was a Scottish journalist who founded Forbes magazine in 1917. He was a prolific writer, penning over 4,000 articles in his lifetime. He was also a prominent business leader and philanthropist, helping to shape the modern business landscape. Following is our collection on famous quotes by B. C. Forbes on leadership, education, business.

Top 10 B. C. Forbes Quotes

1. If you don't drive your business, you will be driven out of business.
2. Opportunity rarely knocks on your door. Knock rather on opportunity's door if you ardently wish to enter.
3. Golf without bunkers and hazards would be tame and monotonous. So would life.
4. Vitally important for a young man or woman is, first, to realize the value of education and then to cultivate earnestly, aggressively, ceaselessly, the habit of self-education.
5. 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.
6. Work is the meat of life, pleasure the dessert.
7. 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.
8. Enthusiasm is the electric current that keeps the engine of life going at top speed. Enthusiasm is the very propeller of progress.
9. It is only the farmer who faithfully plants seeds in the Spring, who reaps a harvest in the Autumn.
10. In the race for success, speed is less important than stamina.

B. C. Forbes Image Quotes

Golf without bunkers and hazards would be tame and monotonous. So would life. — B. C. Forbes

B. C. Forbes Short Quotes

• Better to be occasionally cheated than perpetually suspicious.
• Jealousy... is a mental cancer.
• Many a man thinks he is patient when, in reality, he is indifferent.
• Triumph often is nearest when defeat seems inescapable.
• Bragging often precedes begging.
• Jealousy is an inner consciousness of one's own inferiority. It is a mental cancer.
• Diamonds are only lumps of coal that stuck to their jobs.
• Mediocre men wait for opportunity to come to them. Strong, able, alert men go after opportunity.
• Difficulties should act as a tonic. They should spur us to greater exertion.
• Money, or even power, can never yield happiness unless it be accompanied by the goodwill of others.

B. C. Forbes Quotes About Leadership

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

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

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

There is no fun equal to the satisfaction of doing one's best. 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. — B. C. Forbes

B. C. Forbes Quotes About Business

A shady business never yields a sunny life. — B. C. Forbes

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

If you don't drive your business you will be driven out of business. — B. C. Forbes

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. — B. C. Forbes

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. — 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

Any business arrangement that is not profitable to the other fellow will in the end prove unprofitable for you. The bargain that yields mutual satisfaction is the only one that is apt to be repeated. — B. C. Forbes

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

The man who is too busy to read is never likely to lead. — B. C. Forbes

B. C. Forbes Quotes About Success

Think not of yourself as the architect of your career but as the sculptor. Expect to have to do a lot of hard hammering and chiselingand scraping and polishing. — B. C. Forbes

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

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! — B. C. Forbes

The man who has done his level best... is a success, even though the world may write him down a failure. — 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

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

Success is sweetest to one who has known failure. — B. C. Forbes

Life is just an endless chain of judgements. . . . The more imperfect our judgement, the less perfect our success. — B. C. Forbes

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

B. C. Forbes Quotes About World

He who has faith has... an inward reservoir of courage, hope, confidence, calmness, and assuring trust that all will come out well - even though to the world it may appear to come out most badly. — B. C. Forbes

The be-all and end-all of life should not be to get rich, but to enrich the world. — B. C. Forbes

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

To get the most out of the world one must conscientiously strive to put the most into it. Life without worthy ideals becomes wholly unsatisfying, sour. If our supreme objective is to serve, no blow fate may administer can daunt us. — B. C. Forbes

B. C. Forbes Famous Quotes And Sayings

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

Golf without bunkers and hazards would be tame and monotonous. So would life. — 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

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

There is more credit and satisfaction in being a first-rate truck driver than a tenth-rate executive. — 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

No man can fight his way to the top and stay at the top without exercising the fullest measure of grit, courage, determination, resolution. — 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

Selfishness corrodes. Unselfishness ennobles, satisfies. Don't put off the joy derivable from doing helpful, kindly things for others. — B. C. Forbes

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

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

A word of appreciation often can accomplish what nothing else could accomplish. — 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

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

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

The truth doesn't hurt unless it ought to. — B. C. Forbes

Golf is an ideal diversion, but a ruinous disease. — B. C. Forbes

Christmas moves us to think of others rather than of ourselves & directs our thoughts to giving. — B. C. Forbes

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

An idea, like a machine, must have power applied to it before it can accomplish anything. — B. C. Forbes

What you have outside you counts less than what you have inside you. — B. C. Forbes

Real riches are the riches possessed inside. — 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

Many a man has walked up to the opportunity for which he has long been preparing himself, looked it full in the face, and then begun to get cold feet... when it comes to betting on yourself and your power to do the thing you know you must do or write yourself down a failure, you're a chicken-livered coward if you hesitate. — B. C. Forbes

We must learn that to enjoy happiness we must conscientiously and continuously seek to spread happiness. Selfishness is suicidal to happiness. — B. C. Forbes

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. — B. C. Forbes

The man without religion is as a ship without a rudder. — 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

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. — 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

Kill time and you will kill your career. — 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

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

Anything that inspires unselfishness makes for our ennoblement. Christmas does that. I am all for Christmas. — B. C. Forbes

Courtesy is doing that which nothing under the sun makes you do but human kindness. Courtesy springs from the heart; if the mind prompts the action, there is a reason; if there be a reason, it is not courtesy, for courtesy has no reason. Courtesy is good will, and good will is prompted by the heart full of love to be kind. Only the generous man is truly courteous. He gives freely without a thought of receiving anything in return. — 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

If a pig could pray, it would pray for swill. What do you pray for? — B. C. Forbes

The young man who addresses himself in stern earnest to organizing his life-his habits, his associations, his reading, his study, his work-stands far more chance of rising to a position affording him opportunity to exercise his organizing abilities than the fellow who dawdles along without chart or compass, without plan or purpose, without self-improvement and self-discipline. — B. C. Forbes

You have no idea how big the other fellow's troubles are. — B. C. Forbes

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. — B. C. Forbes

Finally, 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 through laziness, indifference or other avoidable fault, yields nothing but ignominy and sorrow for self and family and friends. — B. C. Forbes

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

It is when things go hardest, when life becomes most trying, that there is the greatest need for having a fixed goal, for having an air castle that the outside world cannot wreck. When few comforts come from without, it is all the more necessary to have a fount to draw from within. And the man or woman who has a star toward which to press cannot be thrown off the course, no matter how the world may try, no matter how far things seem to be wrong. — B. C. Forbes

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. — 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 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. — B. C. Forbes

If you do the best and the most you can today, don't worry about tomorrow. — B. C. Forbes

Temporary release from work, through vacations, becomes more welcome, more pleasurable, even more necessary, as we grow older. — B. C. Forbes

There's no such thing as a self-made man. I've had much help and have found that if you are willing to work, many people are willing to help you. — B. C. Forbes

Work done with little effort is likely to yield little result. — 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

The most profitless things to manufacture are excuses. — 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

Many of the most successful men I have known have never grown up. They have retained bubbling-over boyishness. They have relished wit, they have indulged in humor. They have not allowed dignity to depress them into moroseness. Youthfulnesss of spirit is the twin brother of optimism, and optimism is the stuff of which American business success is fashioned. Resist growing up! — 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

The man who works 52 weeks in the year does not do his best in any one week of the year, Daniel Guggenheim, onetime head of the greatest smelting and mining family in America, impressed upon me. Real recreation quickens aspiration. The true purpose of recreation is not merely to amuse, not merely to afford pleasure, not merely to kill time, but to increase our fitness, enhance our usefulness, spur achievement. — B. C. Forbes

To make headway, improve your head. — 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

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

Time mends all, ends all things earthly. — B. C. Forbes

Honesty is the cornerstone of character. — B. C. Forbes

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

The fittest, not the richest, make the most enviable mark. Pampered sons of plutocrats may shine for a time in society, but not in the world of affairs and of service unless they rip off their coats and get to work early and stay late. To be born with a golden spoon in the mouth is more of a handicap than a help in attaining worthwhile success in this age. — B. C. Forbes

If the deal isn't good for the other party, it isn't good for you. — B. C. Forbes

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

How you start is important, very important, but in the end it is how you finish that counts. It is easier to be a self-starter than a self-finisher. The victor in the race is not the one who dashes off swiftest but the one who leads at the finish. In the race for success, speed is less important than stamina. The sticker outlasts the sprinter in life's race. In America we breed many hares but not so many tortoises. — B. C. Forbes

It's so much easier to do good than to be good. — B. C. Forbes

Life Lessons by B. C. Forbes

1. B.C. Forbes taught that hard work and determination are essential for success, and that success is not achieved overnight. He also emphasized the importance of staying humble and avoiding complacency.
2. Forbes also believed that it was important to remain open-minded and to think outside the box in order to come up with innovative solutions to problems.
3. Finally, Forbes believed that it was important to take risks in order to achieve success, and to never be afraid to fail in the pursuit of one's goals.