Hetty Green Quotes

120 Hetty Green Quotes

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I might have made millions at the rates asked for loan money, but I was satisfied with 6 percent. There is no real need of any legitimate business enterprises suffering, except as they have become involved through the panic amount the stock gamblers and high financiers.
Hetty Green

The country still contains all the elements of prosperity and it will come back when the conditions are right.
Hetty Green

People sometimes wonder why I spend so much time and energy in defending lawsuits. I don’t dare not defend them. I wouldn’t dare me known as an ‘easy mark.’
Hetty Green

[On being an ‘easy mark’ or easy target] All my life I have struggled against being considered one, and I think I have succeeded fairly well.
Hetty Green

It is the principle of the thing I am fighting for. A few dollars more or less would make no difference.
Hetty Green

[On being asked ‘Why don’t you stop and enjoy yourself?’] I don’t know. I look upon my property largely as a trust. I take care of it on much the same principle that you would take care of a valuable animal were it left in your charge.
Hetty Green

My father had the idea that money which one inherited should be given over undiminished to the next generation. He thought the person who inherited it had the full right to the use of the income, but that he ought not to spend the principal. This is the way I have felt.
Hetty Green

I do not think I am the richest woman in America. It is true I am rich.
Hetty Green

I have been blessed in my investments, and that is all.
Hetty Green

I only use common sense. I buy when things are low and no one wants them. I keep them until they go up, and people are crazy to get them. That is, I believe, the secret of all successful business.
Hetty Green



I don’t believe there is any one who works harder than I do.
Hetty Green

I get up at eight o’clock in the morning and I am at work until late in the evening. I am very careful of my eating. I use the best of plain food, but avoid knick-knacks. I avoid sugar and butter, for I believe they do not agree with me. It is not on the grounds of economy, but of health.
Hetty Green

I never worry about things.
Hetty Green

I am always ready to fight for my rights, and I do the best I can every day as I go along. After I have done a thing I let the matter drop.
Hetty Green

My business seldom keeps me awake at night. I sleep well, and, as I have told you, I eat carefully.
Hetty Green

I attribute my freedom from worry largely to the fact that I am a Quaker, and that my father brought me up teaching me to keep myself well in hand.
Hetty Green

A women need not lose her femininity because she has a good business head on her shoulders.
Hetty Green

Women are money-spenders, not money makers. There are a few brilliant exceptions, of course to this as to every rule…
Hetty Green

Few people can do more than one thing well.
Hetty Green

It is certainly a great art to know how to spend money. Women have reduced this art to a science.
Hetty Green



I believe that woman is quite as capable as man in conducting business affairs.
Hetty Green

A good business woman is often sharper than a good business man. She seems to have an intuitive perception which man lacks, and the diplomacy to shape affairs to her will.
Hetty Green

I do not believe woman to be inferior to man, save as she has become so by a mistaken course of training.
Hetty Green

Is about as capable of taking part in the business world – where cool, calm judgment, far-seeing policy, and cautious self-command are the first essentials of success – as a ballet-dancer would be fitted to conduct a medical clinic.
Hetty Green

If you must speculate… know something of what you are buying before you commit yourself.
Hetty Green

More money is made in the end by an over-supply of caution than by indiscriminate recklessness. I am not advising timidity. Quite the contrary. Be very sure that you are right first, then go ahead, and don’t be scared.
Hetty Green

Business training would be an excellent thing for women, but it should be begun in their infancy.
Hetty Green

Everybody, man or woman, should be trained to meet emergencies. One never knows what the future has in store…
Hetty Green

A good business woman should train and learn to trust to some extent her own judgment in business…
Hetty Green

It is not necessary that you should invest; simply keep a record of what you would or would not do. Call them ‘Things I should like to buy’ and ‘Things I consider shaky.’ Then watch the outcome of the investments, and write after your first note the final result. Find out in this way when you are right and wherein you err. It is a cheap method of gaining experience, and you will develop not only a surprisingly accurate sense of the value of things, but also a very clear knowledge as to how far you can trust your own judgment.
Hetty Green



The successful operator in all games of chance – and business is simply a more intricate game than most, with bigger stakes – is the individual who bides his time, yet has the judgment to make a move at the proper time.
Hetty Green

One must not mistake short-sightedness for patience. It is absolutely essential that a good business man should be far-seeing. He should be able to view impartially all sides of a situation, and readily adapt himself to the circumstances of the hour.
Hetty Green

Adaptability is a woman’s prerogative.
Hetty Green

The successful operator in business must watch and take note of everything that may now, or at some future time, affect the business interests. This requires method in the adjustment of facts, memory to call upon them at the critical moment and judgment to discriminate in their value.
Hetty Green

There are time[s], of course when experience counsels holding property, knowing that its value will soon increase; but that is very different from the unreasoning love of possession…
Hetty Green

A good rule to follow is, if you are offered as much as a thing is worth, and all that you ought to get for it, take it, and consider yourself lucky. Many a woman – and man, too, for that matter – has with avaricious greed, waited to final disaster and been left loaded up with worthless commodities.
Hetty Green

To quote the stock markets – suppose you buy at 16 and are offered 32… Better take the offer, I say; 32 in the hand is worth the whole arithmetic in the bush.
Hetty Green

My father had the idea that money which one inherited should be given over undiminished to the next generation.
Hetty Green

A man with whom I was negotiating a loan said: ‘I’m almost afraid to borrow so much and give securities to a single individual. Suppose you were to die!’ ‘Never mind,’ I told him: ‘I’ll throw in a couple of cemeteries as a margin on the securities.’
Hetty Green

One of the inheritances left me by my dear father was this injunction: ‘Hetty be honest always, upright, and just; never take a dollar that doesn’t belong to you, and never take an unfair advantage of any one. And above all things, fight for your rights. As long as you have health, fight.’ And, as I am still enjoying very good health, I am still fighting.
Hetty Green



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