Victory is sweetest when you've know defeat. Ability will never catch up with the demand for it. You pay for everything, even including speaking your mind (with or without one). Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are.
Malcolm ForbesWhy, just a couple of economic seasons ago, was idle cash considered an indication of bad management or lazy management? Because it meant that management didn't have this money out at work ... Now look. Presto! A new fashion! Cash is back in! Denigrating liquidity has dropped quicker than hemlines. A management is now saluted if it has some cash, some liquidity, doesn't have to go to the money market at huge interest rates to get the wherewithal to keep going and growing. Along with Ben Franklin, my father and your father would understand and applaud this new economic fashion.
Malcolm ForbesPerhaps Harvard's greatest contribution to our nation is its requirement that its on-leave professors who want to keep their crimson seats must return from Washington after 24 months.
Malcolm ForbesHopeless cases: Executives who assert themselves by saying No when they should say Yes.
Malcolm ForbesEconomists' unanimity that bad business is ahead is the most reassuring news possible. It's very unlikely that this will be the one time they're right.
Malcolm ForbesWhen you don't want something enough to make the effort, making an effort is a waste.
Malcolm ForbesIf you don't know what to do with many of the papers piled on your desk, stick a dozen colleagues initials on them and pass them along. When in doubt, route.
Malcolm ForbesThere are a handful of companies who understand all successful business operations come down to three basic principles; People---Product---Profit. Without top people, you cannot do much with the other two.
Malcolm ForbesCan you understand why the Congress, most states and most cities refuse to pass legislation requiring the registration and licensing of any and all guns? For the life of me, I can't. We must register our cars and be licensed to drive. In many places we must get licenses for dogs and even bicycles. Being required to register firearms and show the competence and capacity to handle them hardly seems unreasonable, hardly seems an infringement of freedom. What is it that blocks such legislation? Why do they block it? How are they able to block it?
Malcolm ForbesI made my money the old-fashioned way. I was very nice to a wealthy relative right before he died.
Malcolm ForbesUnconsciously I had discovered the commentator's secret weapon-that so long as you can wield words, it isn't necessary to know what you're talking about.
Malcolm ForbesA little while ago I visited Omaha Beach for the second time in my life. In the intervening 26 years, nearly 20,000 tides had come and gone and little remains visible of the greatest military landing in man's history of endless warring. What's to be seen is mostly in a superb museum and a panoramic cemetery. The cemetery memorializes with dignity and grandeur the event and the dead, and moves one deeply. Before they die less precipitously and/or in lesser purpose, Americans who can should visit World War II's Normandy Beach. Such seeing and remembering helps a man's perspective.
Malcolm ForbesThere is just no way any management with any intelligence and foresight cannot recognize the value of a corporate image. It is the best, single marketable investment that a company can make.
Malcolm ForbesNone of my other investments give me the joy that autographs do because they make me feel that I am holding a piece of history in my hands.
Malcolm ForbesLooking the part helps get the chance to fill it. But if you fill the part, it matters not if you look it.
Malcolm ForbesIt is a damned sight easier to start wars than to end them. This truth has been stated for as long and as often as it has been ignored. High time and thank God, we are at least moving toward de-escalation in Vietnam. The road to extrication will be long, painful, bitter. But it must be trod. We are so bogged down in Vietnam that we cannot respond effectively anywhere else in the world to a military power play except through atomic bombardment.
Malcolm ForbesIt's so much easier to suggest solutions when you don't know too much about the problem.
Malcolm ForbesYou have to come up in the world before it's worthwhile for those worth less to put you down.
Malcolm ForbesWhat about the poor salesman who is calling into the office from the corner saloon instead of the home sickbed he claims he is in?
Malcolm ForbesReal writers-that is, capital W Writers-rarely make much money. Their biggest reward is the occasional reader's response.... Commentators-in-print voicing big fat opinions-you might call us small w writers-get considerably more feedback than Writers. The letters I personally find most flattering are not the very rare ones that speak well of my editorials, but the occasional reader who wants to know who writes them. I always happily assume the letter-writers is implying that the editorials are so good that I couldn't have written them myself.
Malcolm Forbes