Quotes from Adolph Ochs
“We are each a world in ourselves, and the pleasantest world is of our own creation. To be domiciled in a ready-made world which may be a misfit may cause you to carry it as a burden instead of living happily in it. Then there is the beaten path—the one that the millions travel and along which the opportunities have to be divided into such minute parts that to the many who must share them they are invisible. Strike out for a new road, and travel on it and help build it into a great highway, and share in the benefits that follow. Take your ambition and abilities to a suitable field of activity. Go there with a fixed purpose, a determination to succeed; acquaint yourself with its tradition and past experience, so as not to be surprised or discouraged by obstructions that may only be blocking the way to a great treasure, placed there that the timid, the faint-hearted, the indolent, the undeserving may not secure it.”
“For what are you preparing yourself—the newspaper of yesterday, the newspaper of today or the newspaper of tomorrow? If you are being taught in terms of yesterday or today, I wish to say to you that tomorrow is something more than another day. It is another world. We are on the eve of new ideas and new methods. The inventive genius of man is rapidly extending the use of Nature’s powers and resources. Tomorrow is truly a new world, and not more so in anything else than in the profession of journalism. What is of interest on the morrow is what makes the live, interesting newspaper. Tomorrow is where the newspaper man lives and views the multifarious activities of mankind.”
“It does not require much stretch of imagination to expect that reporters will in the near future carry with them some kind of portable wireless telephone and thus keep in touch with their offices. So, again I say, prepare for the morrow!”
“Do not live in the past. Be up and doing. Be alive. It is said that an undertaker in Philadelphia displays a sign which reads, ‘Why go around half dead when I will bury you for $37.50?’”
“The best a man takes to his grave is that which he wisely gave away.”
