Malcolm Forbes

Malcolm Stevenson Forbes (1919-08-19 - 1990-02-24) was the publisher of Forbes magazine.

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• Ability will never catch up with the demand for it.

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

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

• Contrary to the cliché, genuinely nice guys most often finish first or very near it.

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

• Diversity: the art of thinking independently together.

• Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
  • Variants: The goal of education is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
    The purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open one.

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

• Everybody has to be somebody to somebody to be anybody.

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

• Failure is success if we learn from it.

• 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.

• How to succeed? Try hard enough.

• If you don't know what to do with many of the papers piled on your desk, stick a dozen colleagues' initials on 'em, and pass them along. When in doubt, route.

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

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

• If you have no critics you'll likely have no success.

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Let your children go if you want to keep them.

• Men who never get carried away should be.
  • Variant: People who never get carried away should be.

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

• One can pay back the loan of gold, but one lives forever in debt to those who are kind.

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

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

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

• People who never get carried away should be.

• Presence is more than just being there.

• Retirement kills more people than hard work ever did.

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

• The best vision is insight.

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

• The more sympathy you give, the less you need.

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

• There's no way to move without making waves.

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

• To measure the man, measure his heart.

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

• Victory is sweetest when you've known defeat.

• 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.

• 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.

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

• When you cease to dream you cease to live.

• You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.