Malcolm Forbes Quotes

Trying to impress others does - usually in quite the opposite way.

Compliment others on the virtues they have; and they're not half as pleased as being complimented for the ones they don't have.

Re raising kids: Love, without discipline, isn't.

Any marriage that survives a big wedding can probably survive.

When it's your own fault, things hurt worse than when someone else is to blame.

He who says he never needs help, most does.

If you've had a good time playing the game, you're a winner even if you lose.

How to fail: Try too hard.

The last thing you do the best is what you have the most joy doing.

I hope a start at getting some oil out of the enormous Alaska field isn't indefinitely mired in a bureaucratic morass as a result of our national concern for the ecology. This concern must not be so misguided, misdirected, misused that it serves to stop economic growth, to bankrupt companies, to stifle new development, new jobs, new horizons. In fighting new pollution and stemming present pollution, exciting, sometimes costly means and methods exist and others will evolve. But blanket legislative naysaying to expanding power and energy sources is stupid, self-defeating.

Once in a while there's wisdom in recognizing that the Boss is.

When one seeks assurance, there's none from those who respond, Now, don't you worry about a thing. If you weren't worried, you wouldn't have asked. If you are concerned, it's nice to know that those you query are, too. I'll take a worrier any day over a platitudinous reassurer.

The top people of the biggest companies are, surprisingly, often the nicest ones in their company I'm not sure, though, if they got there because they were good guys or that they're now good guys because they can afford to be.

Most oldsters are fascinated by the Future, while the young love to look back to earlier days, especially their own.

. . . the most difficult thing asked by our young is not our earnings but our ears.

When you catch what you're after, it's gone.

How would you know what happy is if you've never been otherwise.

One often reads about the art of conversation-how it's dying or what's needed to make it flourish, or how rare good ones are. But wouldn't you agree that the infinitely more valuable rara avis [rare bird] is a good listener.

Several weeks of summer vacation in the Thirties I spent working at $15 a week in the FORBES office.... I worked in the mail cage, where envelopes were slit and subscription payments extracted. Dad used to come pounding down the office aisle and pause long enough to ask, How much today? Inevitably the answer was inadequate-except once. That day the controller said excitedly, Mr. Forbes, the ledger shows a slight profit this month! ... My father turned to him and said, Young man, I don't give a damn what your books show. Do we have any money in the bank?

Venture nothing, and life is less than it should be.

Thinkers perish, thoughts don't.

Are you not justified in feeling inferior, when you seek to cover it up with arrogance and insolence?

By the time we've made it, we've had it.

No one ever dies wishing they'd spent more time at the office.

Those who enjoy responsibility usually get it; those who merely like exercising authority usually lose it.

I think the foremost quality - there's no success without it - is really loving what you do. If you love it, you do it well, and there's no success if you don't do well what you're working at.

People who stare deserve the looks they get.

Authority's for sharing only when the sharer is sure of his (or hers).

Being right half the time beats being half-right all the time.

He who hesitates is sometimes wise.

All work and no play makes jack. With enough jack, Jack needn't be a dull boy.

If you never budge, don't expect a push.

When young, you're shocked by the number of people who turn out to have feet of clay. Older, you're surprised by the number of people who don't.

What advertising dum-dum signed up Ilie Nastase to sell a resort?! Who'd want to go where he's at?

It doesn't take much of a rule to measure a mean man.

Some people as a result of adversity are sadder, wiser, kinder, more human. Most of us are better, though, when things go better. Knowing when to keep your mouth shut is invariably more important than opening it at the right time. Always listen to a man when he describes the faults of others. Often times, most times, he's describing his own, revealing himself.

People who say that money isn't the most important thing in the world are usually broke.

When a fissure off the California coast started pumping and dumping oil on the nearby towns and beaches, everybody started dumping on Union Oil. Matters weren't helped one iota by a manufactured quotation attributed to Union's president, Fred Hartley, alleging his amazement at the publicity for the loss of a few birds.... Fred Hartley never said what the press reported, as the transcript and the Senate committee members definitely established. But I don't suppose the truth will ever catch up with the more colorful falsehood.

Advice: It's more fun to give than to receive.

Listening to advice often accomplishes far more than heeding it.

I make more money selling advice than following it

Keeping score of old scores and scars, getting even and one-upping, always makes you less than you are.

Will this massive outcry [about pollution] continue long enough to have effective results? Will federal and state laws be enacted with effective enforcement clauses? Will people be concerned long enough to pay the bill through higher prices? Will towns tole lost jobs when it proves too costly to clean obsolete plants?... I think so, but it sure won't be as easy as the present outcry and political oratory suggest. The answers to preserving a livable environment are not all simple, and some of the nuts now pushing simplistic cure-alls won't help bring about any lasting solutions.

Daydreams are doable. The turn-on is not in scale, spectacle, or cost. It's in the doing. Anything you haven't done is an adventure. Wanting to is the principal requirement. If you can do and want to, don't not. In short, while alive, live.

Experts kill me. Economic experts, that is. Corporations, foundations, publications and governments pay them by the bucketful, and they fill buckets with forecasts that change more frequently than white-collar, workers do shirts. What Lies Ahead is the usual title. What Lies would often be more appropriate. If women's hemlines changed as rapidly as an economist's forecasts, the fashion people and the textile industry would be more profitable than any other. In fact, if all the country's economists were laid end to end, they still wouldn't reach a conclusion.

The only unforgivable sin: Being unforgiving.

Speaking of birthdays, our firstborn [recently turned 2]. As parents sometimes fondly do, we reminisced a bit about his early days on earth-the excitement, the wonder, the fears when we brought him home. His every squeak or squawk we were sure heralded some terrible crisis; I tested the warmth of formulas from dusk to dawn, it seemed. We were so germ-conscious my wife even sterilized the skin of the oranges before squeezing them. How firstborns ever survive their parents' attentions is beyond me. However, they do, and he did, and, in spite of our efforts, he turned out to be quite a good guy.

It ticks me no end when people get ticked off at those of us who comment audibly and in print on events and problems. That's what we're paid for. Why clutter up your mind with a bunch of facts that might inhibit the solve-ability of us who must express an opinion? After all, all the world cries out for a solution to its problems, and we supply them right and left. Come to think of it, it's we who should be giving our deplorers and detractors the blast; because 99% of the time they don't do as we say.