Clive Berghofer Quotes
100 Clive Berghofer Quotes
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I found that my mind has been going 150 miles an hour all its life. It’s hard to slow it down even to 101 miles.
Clive Berghofer
I hated school.
Clive Berghofer
I’m dyslexic. I like work. I hated school. I was good at arithmetic, but I just hated English, geography and history. I’m a terrible speller, I’m a terrible writer and a terrible reader.
Clive Berghofer
Well, work. I love work. When I was twelve I could outwork any man, you know.
Clive Berghofer
At fourteen I could sew more bags than anybody. I could sew record numbers of bags. I could sew them properly.
Clive Berghofer
Then I got a job in a sawmill. They’d only work 40-odd hours. Then I used to cut firewood of an afternoon and that. I used to buy firewood from the farmers for ten shillings, I think it was, and then sell it for fifteen shillings a load or something.
Clive Berghofer
[On becoming a carpenter’s labourer] They only worked 40 hours too. They didn’t get overtime then. So in the afternoon, as soon as I knocked off work, I’d have a job down the road and I might work at it well into the night, or I might race in early of a morning and work. You know, I didn’t start [the day job] until eight o’clock.
Clive Berghofer
Then at weekends, I’d work all weekend. Then holidays – say the Show Day holiday – my mates would say, ‘We’re going to the Show.’ They might have only been paid 2 pounds or 3 pounds a day in those days, but then they might have gone to the show and spent 5 pounds, say. Righto, I used to work for the day. I may have made 3 or 4 pounds, plus I probably saved 5 pounds because I didn’t go to the show. And I just gradually built up my money.
Clive Berghofer
A guy rang me up one day and said, ‘I want a fowl house built.’ I said that I charged seven shillings and sixpence an hour. He said ‘I don’t want it by the hour, I want it by the contract.’ I said, ‘What does contract mean?’ He said, ‘You give me a price for the whole fowl house.’ I said, ‘I’ve never done this.’ But I sat down and worked out every nail and every screw. It came to 27 pounds for this fowl house. I allowed two days at 5 pounds a day – and I was only getting about 5 pounds a week then. I thought, holy hell, if I can earn 5 pounds a day I’m going to be rich! So he said, ‘Righto, you can do the job.’ So I went in and I started very early one morning, and I finished with the car lights. I did it in a day and I mad 10 pounds in a day. I thought, I’ll do more contract work now.
Clive Berghofer
My father was brought up in the Depression days. They were always frightened of spending money and that. When I was working as a carpenter’s labourer, I had that much work lined up – my weekend work – that I said, ‘I’m going out on my own.’ ‘Oh you fool!’ he said. ‘You’re getting 8 pounds a bloody week. You’re making good money at weekends. You’re bloody mad!’ I said, ‘After twelve months at this job I’m getting out on my own – you see!’ And I got out on my own. Then I said, ‘I think I’ll put someone on. I’ve got that much work, I think I’ll start employing a man.’ [His father] ‘Oh, you bloody fool!’ But I took no notice of anybody. I said, ‘Right, if I want to do it, I’ll do it.’ So I started putting a few people on.
Clive Berghofer
I would often see different ways of doing things.
Clive Berghofer
[In 2002] I drove the kerb machine this morning, and kerbed a subdivision that we’re doing.
Clive Berghofer
I used to work with the crew all the time once, but I don’t work with them as much now, unless it is really important and I want to get it done faster. At the shopping centre that I built here, I worked with them the whole time.
Clive Berghofer
[On being asked if there are any personal costs in keeping up this pace of work] Oh no, my health is probably… You know, I’ve got aching bones and things. Plenty of people have.
Clive Berghofer
I designed it and built it myself. I had a back operation in the middle of it. I had a laminectomy halfway through it. The doctor said, ‘Your back has caved in. Look, the only way you’ll fix it is with an operation, but you’ll have to be in hospital for seven days and you’ll have to be off your feet for six weeks.’ So it was going to be bloody hard for me to work. I said, ‘I’ll have to do something, because I’m in too much pain.’ I was in hospital, and after four days he came to visit me. I was walking around pretty well. He said, ‘You’re recovering well.’ I said, ‘Yes, I’ve got it.’ He said, ‘When do you want to go home?’ I said, ‘I’d better not go home today, I’ll go home tomorrow.’ It was five days, and I came back to work.
Clive Berghofer
[On thinking about slowing down] I was sitting at home at night time by myself. A person usually has kids at home or somebody, you know, moving around. [But the next day he went back to work again] Probably as busy as ever.
Clive Berghofer
Some people, they’ve done nothing much in life and they can retire and potter around the house. With me, I’ll do my hedges and mow my whole lawn in about two and a half hours. Some blokes will spend the day doing the bloody hedges, you know.
Clive Berghofer
Everything I’ve done I’ve always done with speed, and so it’s hard to say, ‘Look, I’m going to slow down.’
Clive Berghofer
Opportunity doesn’t always knock. Some people say that they only want a full piece of cake. Some people say that half a piece of cake is better than none. I always say any bit of cake is better than none. If opportunity knocks, grab it, because you don’t know what it turns into or when the next one is going to turn up.
Clive Berghofer
[On a special joke about a gardener who works at a church in London] One day the minister comes along and says that the garden is not big enough to keep the man busy. ‘What we want you to do,’ he says, ‘is to open and close the doors of the church, and write down the names of the people so we’ve got their names.’ ‘I can’t write,’ the gardener replied, ‘and so I won’t be able to write the names down.’ ‘Then I think we’ll have to let you leave,’ the minister says. ‘We’ll have to get someone else to do the job.’ In due course the gardener goes on to open a tobacco shop, and then another, and another. Eventually he has a huge chain of shops. One day he goes to his bank manager, who asks him to fill in a form. The one-time gardener confesses that he cannot write. ‘Holy hell,’ the manager says. ‘Here you are, you own this huge chain of tobacco shops all through London and you can’t write! Where would you be if you could write?’ ‘Opening and closing the doors to a church,’ the man replies.
Clive Berghofer
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