Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The real test of business greatness is in giving opportunity to others. Many business men fail in this because they are thinking only of personal glory.
If I were asked to say the most important things that lead to a successful life, I should say that, first of all, was integrity - unimpeachable integrity.
Young men may enjoy dropping their work at five or six o'clock and slipping into a dress suit for an evening of pleasure; but the habit has certain drawbacks.
You can tell a workingman you like him, but he knows whether you are sincere or not. You can't make him believe you are interested in his welfare unless you are.
To my mind, the best investment a young man starting out in business can possibly make is to give all his time, all his energies, to work - just plain, hard work.
There is no royal road to a successful life, as there is no royal road to learning. It has got to be hard knocks, morning, noon, and night, and fixity of purpose.
Let us suppose you become a craneman. Suppose you become a clerk in a lawyer's office. Give the best that is in you. Let nothing stand in the way of your going on.
I didn't take up shorthand with any idea of becoming a professional at it. It merely appeared to me to be a good thing to know - something that might come in handy.
I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among men the greatest asset I possess. The way to develop the best that is in a man is by appreciation and encouragement.
Men make opportunity. Every great industrial achievement has been the result of individual effort - the practical development of a dream in the mind of an individual.
The aristocracy in the future is not one of wealth or university education, but the aristocracy of the men who have done something for themselves and their fellow men.
In my own house, I rigged up a laboratory and studied chemistry in the evenings, determined that there should be nothing in the manufacture of steel that I would not know.
If more persons would get so enthused over their day's work that some one would have to remind them to go out to lunch there would be more happiness in the world and less indigestion.
Fundamentally, the basis of all modern progress is the efficiency of labor. And the only sure road to restored prosperity is through the thrift and hard work of our people as a whole.
The difference between getting somewhere and nowhere is the courage to make an early start. The fellow who sits still and does just what he is told will never be told to do big things.
What little success I may have won in life I attribute to the loyalty I had for a dear old friend who was my first steel master, whom you perhaps have never heard of: Captain Bill Jones.
We make our own labor unions. We organize our labor into units of 300, and then the representatives of these 300 meet together every week. Then every fortnight they meet with the head men.
Many men fail because they do not see the importance of being kind and courteous to the men under them. Kindness to everybody always pays for itself. And, besides, it is a pleasure to be kind.
Bare hands grip success better than kid gloves. Be thorough in all things, no matter how small or distasteful! The man who counts his hours and kicks about his salary is a self-elected failure.
I became interested, through reading the works of some novelist, in Egyptology and made a study of the pyramids. It was just a hobby, but I had a desire to know all I could about everything I could.
The man who attracts attention is the man who is thinking all the time, and expressing himself in little ways. It is not the man who tries to dazzle his employer by doing the theatrical, the spectacular.
The hardest struggle of all is to be something different from what the average man is. I don't believe in 'super-men,' for the world is full of capable men, but it's the fellow with determination that wins out.
Did you ever stop to think that a great man in life who has won great acclaim and great reputation is the very man who is willing to share and give the honor to others in the doing of things that made him great?
A man, to carry on a successful business, must have imagination. He must see things as in a vision, a dream of the whole thing. A man can cultivate this faculty only by an appreciation of the finer things in life.
The captains of industry are not hunting money. America is heavy with it. They are seeking brains - specialized brains - and faithful, loyal service. Brains are needed to carry out the plans of those who furnish the capital.
The supreme need of the world is peace and good will among men. It must be peace founded upon justice and fairness, the righting of past wrong, and the securing of the future as far as possible against the evils of the past.
The truth is that we have hitherto made no genuine effort to produce forged steel working parts of automobiles of the highest quality. That is one of the reasons why our automobiles have not ranked with those of foreign make.
Every one's got it in him, if he'll only make up his mind and stick at it. None of us is born with a stop-valve on his powers or with a set limit to his capacities, There's no limit possible to the expansion of each one of us.
American industry is spilling over with men who started life even with the leaders, with brains just as big, with hands quite as capable. And yet one man emerges from the mass, rises sheer about his fellows; and the rest remain.
The men who miss success have two general alibis: 'I'm not a genius' is one; the other, 'There aren't the opportunities today there used to be.' Neither excuse holds. The first is beside the point; the second is altogether wrong.
You can make up your mind to do one of two things: You can have a good time in life, or you can have a successful life, but you can't have both. You have got to make up your mind at the start which of the two you are going to have.
I have always believed that the aristocracy of any country should be the men who have succeeded - the men who have aided in upbuilding their country - the men who have contributed to the efficiency and happiness of their fellow men.
When you go into your customary barber shop, you will wait for the man who gives you a little better shave, a little trimmer hair-cut. Business leaders are looking for the same things in their offices that you look for in the barber shop.
A factory can be closed down, its chimneys smokeless, waiting for the worker to come back to his job, and all will be peaceful. But the moment workers are imported, and the striker sees his own place usurped, there is bound to be trouble.
In our works at Bethlehem and San Francisco, and all over the United States, I adopted this system: I pay the managers practically no salary. I make them partners in the business, only I don't let them share in the efforts of any other man.
Money is often a matter of chance or good fortune and is not the mark of a successful life. It is not the thing that brings a throb of pleasure or a thrill into my life. And I would not pose as a successful man if that were to be the measure.
When I first went to work... I had over me an impetuous, hustling man. It was necessary for me to be up to the top notch to give satisfaction. I worked faster than I otherwise would have done, and to him I attribute the impetus that I acquired.
Any man who goes into anything in life and does it better than the average will have a successful life. If he does it worse than the average, his life will not be successful. And no business can exist in which success cannot be won on that basis.
Here I am, a not over-good business man, a second-rate engineer. I can make poor mechanical drawings. I play the piano after a fashion. In fact, I am one of those proverbial Jack-of-all-trades who are usually failures. Why I am not, I can't tell you.
I find my greatest happiness in thinking of those days in Homestead when I labored to bring a thing to perfection entirely by myself. In the evenings, I would go into the hills and look down on my work, and I knew that it was good, and my heart was elated.
I'm making better than two million a year, but it's hard work. The luxuries and pleasures I enjoy in my spare time keep me in condition to do that work. Carnegie and Frick have more money than I have, but I'm getting more value for my dollars than they are.
If you are going into any manufacturing establishment, don't go there by reason of any influence you may have. Start upon your own merits, and start in some lowly position, no matter what it is. Be a laborer, if you will. I don't know but that is the best way to start.
I mention the need of cooperation and confidence among the men who work, no matter what may be their relative ranks, because it is the vital factor underlying everything. Only as we are willing to work today, work as we never have worked before, will civilization survive.
A concern that produces its own raw materials, and works them up through the various processes until it delivers the manufactured product in the domestic or foreign market, can work on a narrower margin all around, and yet do full justice to its stockholders and employees.
The Homestead plant, taken as a whole, is complete and finished in every department. There is nothing of any consequence to be desired. It is the first time I have ever been connected with any works that I could say it is finished and complete and to my entire satisfaction.
A man will succeed in anything about which he has real enthusiasm, in which he is genuinely interested, provided that he will take more thought about his job than the men working with him. The fellow who sits still and does what he is told will never be told to do big things.
Concentrate and think upon the problem in mind until a satisfactory conclusion is reached, and then finally go ahead. If you have made a mistake, all right. Never find fault with a man because he has made a mistake. It is only a fool that makes the same mistake the second time.
Most talk about 'super-geniuses' is nonsense. I have found that when 'stars' drop out, successors are usually at hand to fill their places, and the successors are merely men who have learned by application and self-discipline to get full production from an average, normal brain.
Our efforts must be bent in the direction of convincing the great mass of working people of this country of the necessity of our winning and retaining our place in business and commerce. That place can be won only through the workers' own efforts and through their own efficiency.
As the train rounded the curve, the great smoking stacks of the Edgar Thomson works, the flaming converters belching forth, made such a vivid impression upon my youthful mind that it will never fade. I thought I had seen the very acme of what might be accomplished in an industrial way.