Personality is to a man what perfume is to a flower.
Charles M. Schwab
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.
The man who has done his best has done everything.
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.
A man who trims himself to suit everybody will soon whittle himself away.
When you start in life, if you find you are wrongly placed, don't hesitate to change, but don't change because troubles come up and difficulties arise. You must meet and overcome and conquer them. And in meeting and overcoming and conquering them, you will make yourself stronger for the future.
When a man has put a limit on what he will do, he has put a limit on what he can do.
I will not be in the position of having management dictated to by labor.
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.
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.
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.
Set out with some definite purpose in life and accomplish that purpose. There is little that the human mind can conceive that is not possible of accomplishment. The thing to do is to make up your mind what you are going to drive for, and let nothing stand in the way of its ultimate accomplishment.
Lead the life that will make you kindly and friendly to everyone about you, and you will be surprised what a happy life you will lead.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Make your employer feel truthfully that you are sincere with him; that you are going to promote his interest; that you are going to stand for the things which he represents; that you are proud of being a member of his staff, and there is nothing that will reap you a richer reward. Loyalty above all!
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.
I disagreed with Carnegie's ideas on how to best to distribute his wealth. I spent mine! Spending creates more wealth for everybody.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In the long run, no nation can prosper unless the world prospers.
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.
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.
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.
The captains of industry do not keep on working for the sake of making money, but for the love of completing a job successfully.
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.
We hear much of Bolshevism, much of labor unrest; at times, we hear the word 'revolution.' But these are but contagious diseases in the body of civilization, and I believe that the antitoxins of good cheer, mutual confidence, fairness and justice will ultimately cure these ills and make the world healthy and strong again.
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.
The Bethlehem profit-sharing system is based on my belief that every man should get exactly what he makes himself worth. This is the only plan I know of which is equally fair to the employers and every class of employee. Someday, I hope, all labor troubles will be solved by such a system.
The first essential in a boy's career is to find out what he's fitted for, what he's most capable of doing and doing with a relish.
All successful employers are stalking men who will do the unusual, men who think, men who attract attention by performing more than is expected of them.
There's no limit possible to the expansion of each one of us.
I was once asked if a big business man ever reached his objective. I replied that if a man ever reached his objective he was not a big business man.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
There is nothing a worker resents more than to see some man taking his job. 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.
My own idea is that if the men hold any meetings or attempt to form any organization, we should be prepared to be fully informed of all that goes on and unhesitatingly discharge any men connected with this movement. In this way, our peace will be secure for a long time, and it will be easily done if taken at the start.
