Malcolm Forbes Quotations

Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.

The purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open one.

Victory is sweetest when you've known defeat.

The best vision is insight.

Diversity: the art of thinking independently together.

Few businessmen are capable of being in politics, they don't understand the democratic process, they have neither the tolerance or the depth it takes. Democracy isn't a business.

The biggest mistake people make in life is not trying to make a living at doing what they most enjoy.

Failure is success if we learn from it.

When you cease to dream you cease to live.

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

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

It's so much easier to suggest solutions when you don't know too much about the problem.

When what we are is what we want to be, that's happiness.

Diamonds are nothing more than chunks of coal that stuck to their jobs.

Thinking well to be wise: planning well, wiser: doing well wisest and best of all.

If 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.

It's more fun to arrive a conclusion than to justify it.

If you have a job without any aggravations, you don't have a job.

Success follows doing what you want to do. There is no other way to be successful.

Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are.

Never hire someone who knows less than you do about what he's hired to do.

When things are bad, we take comfort in the thought that they could always get worse. And when they are, we find hope in the thought that things are so bad they have to get better.

It is all one to me if a man comes from Sing Sing Prison or Harvard. We hire a man, not his history.

What's an expert? I read somewhere, that the more a man knows, the more he knows, he doesn't know. So I suppose one definition of an expert would be someone who doesn't admit out loud that he knows enough about a subject to know he doesn't really know how much.

If you expect nothing, you're apt to be surprised. You'll get it.

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

The more sympathy you give, the less you need.

People who matter are most aware that everyone else does too.

Men who never get carried away should be.

Pay your people the least possible and you'll get from them the same.

People who never get carried away should be.

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

Let your children go if you want to keep them.

Anyone who says businessmen deal in facts, not fiction, has never read old five-year projections.

Everybody has to be somebody to somebody to be anybody.

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

Elected leaders who forget how they got there won't the next time.

One worthwhile task carried to a successful conclusion is worth half-a-hundred half-finished tasks.

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.

Presence is more than just being there.

Executives who get there and stay suggest solutions when they present the problems.

Their steaks are often good, but the lobsters-with claws the size of Arnold Schwarzenegger's forearms-are as glazed and tough as most of the customers.

How to succeed: Try hard enough.How to fail: Try too hard.

The best buy by way of management is brains-at any price.

There 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.

Since you have to do the things you have to do, be wise enough to do some of the things you want to do.

If you have a job without aggravations, you don't have a job.

One of the ceaseless wonders of the world: The power of a smile.

More often than not, things and people are as they appear.

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

In the long run, a short cut seldom is.

It's great to arrive, but the trip's most always most of the fun.

The only unforgivable sin: Being unforgiving.

A hug's a happy thing while a shrug's so often destructive.

How to succeed? Try hard enough.

To live long and achieve happiness, cultivate the art of radiating happiness.

Unconsciously 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.

Generous gestures yield the most when that isn't their purpose.

The dumbest people I know are those who know it all.

Nothing is sometimes the right thing to say.

Retirement kills more people than hard work ever did.

It's always worthwhile to make others aware of their worth.

For some of us it seems like yesterday when Ike was in the White House, the U.S. Senate censured Joe McCarthy, and the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that racial segregation in public school was unconstitutional.

The art of conversation lies in listening.

The key to success is not through achievement, but through enthusiasm.

In business, there’s such a thing as an invaluable person, but no such thing as an indispensable one.

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

As you get older, don't slow down. Speed up. There's less time left!

People who can’t see without glasses should wear them.

We'd all like to be taken for what we'd like to be.

I made my money the old-fashioned way. I was very nice to a wealthy relative right before he died.

To measure the man, measure his heart.

There is never enough time, unless you're serving it.

One who never asks either knows everything or nothing.

To live your life in the fear of losing it is to lose the point of life.

None 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.

Isn't it fortunate how selective our recollections usually are.

At the heart of any good business is a chief executive officer with one.

There are more fakers in business than in jail.

The difference between men and boys is the price of their toys.

Putting pen to paper lights more fire than matches ever will

Noone's a leader if there are no followers..

It's a very short trip. While alive, live.

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.

One's real worth is never a quantifiable thing.

The difference between towering and cowering is totally a matter of inner posture.

A 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.

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

The ultimate high: A man's abilities equaling his opinion of'em.

He who says he never needs help, most does.

It's the less bright students who make teachers teach better.

When profit is unshared, it's less likely to grow greater.

Too few accomplish twice as much as too many.

After the fact, our hearts always go out to the fallen Goliaths. Yet we invariably root for their Davids. Until they're winners.

The ultimate in futility is owning important jewelry. Insurers often insist on the wearing of paste replicas because necks with real rocks around 'em risk wringing.

Security isn't securities. It's knowing that someone cares whether you are or cease to be.

How to fail: Try too hard.

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?

Once you've given advice to someone, you're obligated.

Listening to advice often accomplishes far more than heeding it.