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P.T. Barnum

35 quotesAutobiographer · Born Jul 5, 1810 · Died Apr 7, 1891 · United States Of America · Male

Phineas Taylor Barnum (July 5, 1810 – April 7, 1891) was an American politician, showman, and businessman remembered for promoting celebrated hoaxes and for founding the Barnum & Bailey Circus. Although Barnum was also an author, publisher, philanthropist, and for some time a politician, he said of himself, "I am a showman by profession...and all the gilding shall make nothing else of me", and his personal aim was "to put money in his own coffers". Barnum is widely, but erroneously, credited with coining the phrase "There's a sucker born every minute". Born in Bethel, Connecticut, Barnum became a small-business owner in his early twenties, and founded a weekly newspaper, before moving to New York City in 1834. He embarked on an entertainment career, first with a variety troupe called "Barnum's Grand Scientific and Musical Theater", and soon after by purchasing Scudder's American Museum, which he renamed after himself. Barnum used the museum as a platform to promote hoaxes and human curiosities such as the Feejee mermaid and General Tom Thumb. In 1850 he promoted the American tour of singer Jenny Lind, paying her an unprecedented $1,000 a night for 150 nights. After economic reversals due to bad investments in the 1850s, and years of litigation and public humiliation, he used a lecture tour, mostly as a temperance speaker, to emerge from debt. His museum added America's first aquarium and expanded the wax-figure department. While in New York, he converted to Universalism and was a member of the Church of the Divine Paternity, now the Fourth Universalist Society in the City of New Yor

All Business (3)Success (3)Fortune (3)Con Men (2)Ambition (2)Cheating (2)Happiness (2)Humbugs (2)Manure (1)cautious (1)Paid Talent (1)Self-Help (1)Language (1)Famous Sayings (1)Sierra Nevada Mountains (1)

From “P. T. Barnum”

You reflect that he is worth twenty thousand dollars, and you incur no risk by endorsing his note; you like to accommodate him, and you lend your name without taking the precaution of getting security. Shortly after, he shows you the note with your endorsement canceled, and tells you, probably…

finances risks Cheating Swindlers

Money is, in some respects, like fire. It is a very excellent servant, but a terrible master.

Money Fire Servant Master

Those who really desire to attain an independence, have only to set their minds upon it, and adopt the proper means, as they do in regard to any other object which they wish to accomplish, and the thing is easily done.

Independence Discipline

Fortune always favors the brave, and never helps a man who does not help himself.

Fortune Brave Self-Help

The great ambition should be to excel all others engaged in the same occupation.

Ambition Competition

The safest plan, and the one most sure of success for the young man starting in life, is to select the vocation which is most congenial to his tastes.

plan Career Vocation

If all the world were blind except myself I should not care for fine clothes or furniture.

Blind appearances Fine Clothes furniture

Advertising is to a genuine article what manure is to land—it largely increases the product.

Advertising Genuine Article Manure Analogies

The possession of a perfect knowledge of your business is an absolute necessity in order to insure success.

Knowldege Business Success

Young men starting in life should avoid running into debt....Debt robs a man of his self-respect, and makes him almost despise himself.

Young Men Debt

The foundation of success in life is good health: that is the substratum fortune; it is also the basis of happiness. A person cannot accumulate a fortune very well when he is sick.

Success Health Happiness Fortune

Be cautious and bold.

cautious bold Contradiction

Let your motto then always be 'Excelsior', for by living up to it there is no such word as fail.

Excelsior Fail Failure Motto

WHATEVER YOU DO, DO IT WITH ALL YOUR MIGHT. Work at it, if necessary, early and late, in season and out of season, not leaving a stone unturned, and never deferring for a single hour that which can be done just as well now. The old proverb is full of truth and meaning, 'Whatever is worth doing at…

perseverance Effort No Stone Unturned Ambition Success

From “Barnum's Humbugs of the World”

OLD GRIZZLY ADAMS. [37-*] James C. Adams, or 'Grizzly Adams,' as he was generally termed, from the fact of his having captured so many grizzly bears, and encountered such fearful perils by his unexampled daring, was an extraordinary character. For many years a hunter and trapper in the Rocky and…

Obituaries Grizzly Adams California New York wolves

Several years since, I purchased a living white whale, captured near Labrador, and succeeded in placing it, 'in good condition,' in a large tank, fifty feet long, and supplied with salt water, in the basement of the American Museum. I was obliged to light the basement with gas, and that frightened…

Whales Zoos Animals in Captivity Circus Attractions Sideshow

Politics and government are certainly among the most important of practical human interests. Now it was a diplomatist—that is, a practical manager of one kind of government matters—who invented that wonderful phrase—a whole world full of humbug in half-a-dozen words—that 'Language was given to us to…

Politics Government George Washington Language Ambassadors

The greatest humbug of all is the man who believes—or pretends to believe—that everything and everybody are humbugs.

Humbugs Quacks Con Men

Science is the pursuit of pure truth, and the systematizing of it. In such an employment as that, one might reasonably hope to find all things done in honesty and sincerity. Not at all, my ardent and inquiring friends, there is a scientific humbug just as large as any other. We have all heard of the…

Humbug Con Men Science Quackery Perpetual Motion

And in what business is there not humbug? 'There’s cheating in all trades but ours,' is the prompt reply from the boot-maker with his brown paper soles, the grocer with his floury sugar and chicoried coffee, the butcher with his mysterious sausages and queer veal, the dry goods man with his 'damaged…

Humbugs Old Masters Great American Novel Chicory Coffee

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