Quotes & Sayings About Money Forbes

Henry Ford has several times sneered at unproductive stockholders ... Well, now. Let's see. Who made Henry Ford's own automobile company possible? The stockholders who originally advanced money to him. Who makes it possible for you and me to be carried to and from business by train or street car? Stockholders ... Who made our vast telephone and telegraph service possible? Stockholders ... Were stockholders all over the country to withdraw their capital from the enterprises in which they are invested, there would be a panic ... on a scale never before known. — B.C. Forbes

Real riches are the riches possessed inside. — B.C. Forbes

Real 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

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

People without independence have no business to meddle with science. It should never be linked with lucre. — Edward Forbes

Money, or even power, can never yield happiness unless it be accompanied by the goodwill of others. — B.C. Forbes

As more money flowed through Washington and as Washington's power to regulate our lives grew, opportunities and temptations for graft, influence peddling and cutting corners grew exponentially. Power breeds corruption. — Steve Forbes

Money isn't everything as long as you have enough. — Malcolm Forbes

A young financial writer once brought ridicule upon himself by stating that a certain company had nothing to commend it except excellent earnings. Well, there are companies whose earnings are excellent but whose stocks I would never recommend. In selecting investments, I attach prime importance to the men behind them. I'd rather buy brains and character than earnings. Earnings can be good one year and poor the next. But if you put your money into securities run by men combining conspicuous brains and unimpeachable character, the likelihood is that the financial results will prove satisfactory. — B.C. Forbes

The richest person in the world - in fact, all the riches in the world - couldn't provide you with anything like the endless, incredible loot available in your local library. You can measure the awareness, the breadth and the wisdom of a civilization, a nation, a people by the priority given to preserving these repositories of all that we are, all that we were, or will be. Our libraries are being eroded alarmingly by inflation. It behooves us - all of us - to stop the rot by the application of that prime preserver - money. — Malcolm Forbes

A lot of money doesn't make anyone more often right. It just makes him harder to correct. — Malcolm Forbes

The most laughable White House criticism is that tax cuts are a 'free lunch.' The American people's work created that money. Only in Washington could there be a belief that letting people keep more of what they create is a giveaway. — Steve Forbes

A nation's economic salvation does not lie in the amount of money its rich inhabitants can squander recklessly. A nation's economic salvation lies in the amount of money its inhabitants can save and invest after providing themselves with all the necessaries and all the reasonable comforts of life. — B.C. Forbes

Forbes cost of living extremely well index (CLEWI) An amazing thing I came across while researching the question of just what it is that very very rich people do with their money. As Forbes says, the CLEWI is to the very rich what the CPI is to "ordinary people." There are forty items on it, and they are hilarious, though perhaps you shouldn't show them to your left-wing aunt if she's suffering from high blood pressure: Russian sable fur coats from Bloomingdale's, shirts from Turnbull and Asser, Gucci loafers, handmade John Lobb shoes, a year at Groton boarding school, a yacht, a horse, a pool, a Learjet, a Roller, a case of Dom Perignon, forty-five minutes at a psychiatrist's on the Upper East Side (!), an hour's estate planning with a lawyer, and, amusingly/annoyingly, a year at Harvard.36 In 2012, the CLEWI went up 2.6 percent but the CPI went up only 1.4 percent. — John Lanchester

How many men I know who are earning dollars aplenty, but who are really earning little of what counts. They are so overwhelmingly engrossed in business that they get nothing from their dollars. The Juggernaut of dollar-making has crushed out of them every capacity for genuine enjoyment, every grace, every unselfish sentiment and instinct. — B.C. Forbes

If Mr. Bush and Mr. Forbes don't get most of the votes, they should be arrested for wasting money. — Lamar Alexander

I make more money selling advice than following it — Malcolm Forbes

Contrary to Piketty's rentier hypothesis, I don't see anyone on the [Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest Americans] whose ancestors bought a great parcel of land in 1780 and have been accumulating family wealth by collecting rents ever since. In America, that old money is long gone - through instability, inflation, taxes, philanthropy, and spending. — Bill Gates

He is a wise man who seeks by every legitimate means to make all the money he can honestly, for money can do so many worthwhile things in this world, not merely for one's self but for others. But he is an unmitigated fool who imagines for a moment that it is more important to make the money than to make it honestly. One of the advantages of possessing money is that it facilitates one's independence and mental attitude. The man head over heels in debt is more slave than independent. — B.C. Forbes

If I owned any of these Hot New Issues that have doubled, tripled, quintupled or umptupled within days and in some cases hours after they were issued, I most certainly would grab my fabulous windfall, thank my lucky stars and invest the money. It's utter nonsense to think any newly issued stock is really worth two, ten or 20 times the [offering] price ... A management so stupid as to sell shares [cheap], and an underwriter so obtuse as not to discern the real value, together would provide reason enough for a sensible man to get rid of his shares. — Malcolm Forbes

How we love to blame others for our misfortunes! Almost every individual who has lost money in stock speculation has on the tip of his tongue an explanation which he trots out to show that it wasn't his own fault at all ... Hardly one loser has the manliness to say frankly, I was wrong. — B.C. Forbes

With all thy getting, get understanding, is the banner under which these Forbes editorials have appeared since the first issue of the publication. We have no illusions about what great wealth can do and what it cannot do. We believe in the worthwhileness of striving by all worthy means to attain success and to attain wealth. Simply because we are convinced that no amount of money is worth the sacrifice of one's better instincts, of one's self-respect-of one's soul, if you wish-simply because we are convinced that riches not gained legitimately and decently are not worth having ... — B.C. Forbes

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

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? — Malcolm Forbes

There is something fundamentally unfair about a government that takes away so much of people's money, power, and personal control while telling them that life will be better as a result. — Steve Forbes

Money is not the thing that drives me. I like to develop assets to create value. No one cares how rich you are or what your ranking is in Forbes magazine. — Mikhail Prokhorov

Why, 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 Forbes

You make more money selling advice than following it. It's one of the things we count on in the magazine business
along with the short memory of our readers. — Steve Forbes

The flat tax would be so simple, you could fill it out on a post card. A post card that would say, in effect, having a wonderful time; glad most of my money is here. — Steve Forbes