Million Dollar Maxims
By Gary Screaton Page, Ph.D.
Copyright © 2008-2010 by Gary Screaton Page. All rights reserved.
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Russell Sage
Russell Sage was the dean of American financiers. He set out in pursuit of his $100,000,000 as an errand boy in a country grocery store. His maxims were these:
1. Be temperate and you will be happy.
2. Plain food, an easy mind, and sound sleep make a man young at eighty-six.
3. Opportunities arc disgusted with men who don’t recognize them.
4. Despair is the forerunner of failure. Next to a fat purse is a “stiff upper lip.”
5. When a man “loses his head,” he mustn’t complain about the other fellow taking an advantage. Keep cool and freeze out the enemy.
C. B. Rouss
At the time of his death, Charles Broadway Rouss was worth more than $6,000,000. He began his business career as a clerk in a small store. His success was the result of, among other things, the following seven maxims embracing the essentials of his very successful business career:
1. The dignity of labor is the greatest of all dignities; the genius of work is the greatest of all geniuses.
2. Industry, integrity, economy, and promptness are cardinal requisites to certain and honorable success.
3. Merit is the trademark of success; quality the true test of value.
4. Success is not in time, place, or circumstance, but in the man.
5. Credit and partnerships arc the scourge of commercial history and the bane of commercial experience.
6. Beware of the gifts of the Greeks; they allure that they may destroy; credit is tempting, but ruin surely follows in its path.
7. Burn the ledger and learn to say No; this is best for both buyer and seller.
Henry Clews
Henry Clews began his working life as a messenger boy in an English woolen factory. By the middle of the 1800’s he was worth in excess of $8,000,000. Clews attributed his rise in life to his belief in these simple mottoes:
1. It requires other things than ambition to become a millionaire; making everything count for something is one of the other things.
2. Sobriety, honesty, and industry arc the three graces of a successful business career.
3. Save without parsimony; spend without lavishness.
4. Sound health, a clear head, wise economy, and work, work, work will declare big dividends far any one who looks well after the original investment.
5. Shun wild speculations, and be satisfied with slow but sure returns for money invested.
[Gary Screaton Page, Ph.D. is a Registered Psychotherapist and author of Pressing Your Own Buttons: How to Take Control of Your Life So Others Don’t™ at http://ww.pressingyourownbuttons.com]