Malcolm Forbes Quotes

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

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

Failure is success if we learn from it.

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

Victory is sweetest when you've known defeat.

The best vision is insight.

Presence is more than just being there.

Diversity: the art of thinking independently together.

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

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

Age isn't important until you run out of it.

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

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

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.

When you cease to dream you cease to live.

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

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 only unforgivable sin: Being unforgiving.

A little reciprocity goes a long way.

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

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

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

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

In the long run, a short cut seldom is.

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

To measure the man, measure his heart.

The more sympathy you give, the less you need.

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

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

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

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

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.

Nothing is sometimes the right thing to say.

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

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

How to succeed? Try hard enough.

Meanness demeans the demeaner far more than the demeaned.

Putting pen to paper lights more fire than matches ever will

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.

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

There's one post-Christmas chore I love-writing thank-you letters.... Lots of companies for many reasonable reasons, I guess, have a policy against sending even Christmas cards, never mind things, at Christmastime. But our clan gets a big kick out of opening the Warner-Lambert box containing an assortment of their wares; we argue over which of the boys is to get the Union Oil Co. necktie [and] all the holiday long we play the marvelous Christmas music sent by Goodyear.... None of these things means that Forbes or Forbeses have been had. But all of us like being thought of.

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.

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

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

Living and dreaming are two different things - but you can't do one without the other.

He who says he never needs help, most does.

I don't think anybody can be a success who doesn't like what they do. [But it's] no job if it has no challenge; there's nothing to it if there are no problems. The essential thing is liking what you're doing.

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

It's never too late to learn.

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