Andrew Forrest Quotes

101 Andrew Forrest Quotes

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[On a hypnotist talking to his mother about his stutter as a child] This is a very intelligent child. There’s something unique about this child and one, two, maximum three lessons which were very expensive. After about the ninth or tenth lesson we realised he was a snake oil salesmen and we stopped.
Andrew Forrest

[On losing his stutter] I think it was a bit of a crash or crash through attitude. It was that I just cannot go on like this and I started to mature a little as you do at fifteen or sixteen... I noticed on a footy field I could string a few words together in a hurry.
Andrew Forrest

If I had to get up and answer a question in a classroom, well I was toast.
Andrew Forrest

[On his stutter as a child] I thought it’s got to be psychological. So crash or crash through.
Andrew Forrest

I enrolled in the house debating team. And that was a gladiatorial sport.
Andrew Forrest

[As a child overcoming his stutter in school] I went to one or two debates and it just terrified me till my skin went right up my shirt. Then I thought, actually… I actually just have to do that. I have to join the debating team and get up and see if I can pull it off.
Andrew Forrest

[On his father indirectly saying that Minderoo was going to be run by his elder brother in the future] Reading the tea leaves it was like, ‘You’d better go and make your own way son.’ And I think that was probably a very good thing. I went to university and did a degree [In international politics and economics] and went back to the station for a year and came back looking for a job.
Andrew Forrest

[On his job seeking plan after finishing university and being on the station for a year] It was a plan to be able to feed myself. That was as grand as it got. To try and make a start somewhere.
Andrew Forrest

[On getting his first job outside Minderoo Station] I just cold called and wrote to broking houses and bankers and money markets and futures – just anywhere to just try to get some experience. I eventually got a job by agreeing to work for nothing for a period of time. And that was accepted.
Andrew Forrest

[On him agreeing to work for free on his first job outside Minderoo Station] That was probably all I was worth at the start too. After three or four months I was put on the books and back paid and went on from there.
Andrew Forrest



[On what he wanted to do after getting started] Something which made something, something which created something as opposed to just acting as a middle man. And so I went for the mining sector, the general resources sector, the energy sector and became an analyst and really enjoyed it.
Andrew Forrest

[On what’s been his genius in being able to create companies] I wouldn’t call it genius. That’s an overly generous term. It’s really something which I tell everyone at Fortescue and with a lot less confidence, I used to tell people at Anaconda now Minara Resources – is that if you have a vision or a belief or a goal and it’s true, it’s proper – it’s able to be held up and examined and you know that whatever happens out of this – just going for it will in some way improve the lives of the people in it. Hopefully broader than that and may even be useful to the community at large. And if you can hold that up and it can’t be attacked, it’s logic can’t be negated. Then it is something which you should determine as one of those rare things you should never, ever give up on.
Andrew Forrest

Getting Anaconda Nickel going and establishing the laterite nickel industry in Australia which is something I thought was as the world was running out of sulphide nickel but we’re never run out of demand for ever increasing quality stainless steel and metals where you would need nickel. Yet, the traditional source of Nickel was rapidly dying out - the analogy is true in the Iron Ore industry too. Then laterite nickel being very abundant in Australia, but totally untapped, would have to be the future. So no matter how hard that was, you knew the truth was the world would need laterite Nickel.
Andrew Forrest

[If you could establish a new source of nickel] If you could crack that somehow, then it would be an incredibly useful exercise.
Andrew Forrest

Unfortunately the uniqueness of the night was that it was unique to me… I never expected what I found at Hall’s Creek.
Andrew Forrest

[On an aboriginal guy about his age that he met who had gone away and had gone onto become a lawyer] He looked me squarely in the face and he said ‘I know where you grew up.’ And I said ‘Yeah, I know were you grew up too, you grew up around here.’ And he said ‘I know where you really grew up.’ And I said ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Most of your friends are dead.’ And I was quite shocked and I said ‘That’s correct – why?’ And he said ‘Because most of my friends are dead too.’
Andrew Forrest

[On being at an Aboriginal friends funeral and acting to help the problem] The ability for me to make a choice about what I am doing was removed by this experience. I now have no choice. I must do what I’m doing. Which is to try to remove the disparity through opportunity and responsibility. Because we’ll never do it with welfare for able bodied, and able minded people. In fact welfare will remove that able body and mind eventually.
Andrew Forrest

[On the funeral of one of his Aboriginal friends] He just went the welfare cycle, and eventually died a premature death. And his own little bloke and mine got together and they said, ‘Uncle’ and ‘Dad’ - ‘What are you going to do about it?’
Andrew Forrest

[On acting earlier than he has] If I knew that the welfare lobby, the whole mentality of it, was as powerful and potentially as nasty as what I have found it to be, then I might have reconsidered it…
Andrew Forrest

It’s that wonderful adage that if you ever think that a few good people can’t change the world, then indeed it’s the only thing which ever does.
Andrew Forrest



You’re only on this earth for a really short time. Make the best of that precious time.
Andrew Forrest



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