Henry Ford citations

“La démocratie dont je suis partisan, c'est celle qui donne à tous les mêmes chances de réussite, selon les capacités de chacun. Celle que je repousse, c'est celle qui prétend remettre au nombre l'autorité qui appartient au mérite.”

“Before everything else, getting ready is the secret of success.”

“Failure is only the opportunity more intelligently to begin again.”

“Chop your own wood and it will warm you twice”

“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”

“Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than in trying to solve them.”

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't — you're right.”

“Money is only a tool in business.”

“The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.”

“Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.”

“Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.”

“It is perhaps well enough that the people of the Nation do not know or understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”

“Life is a series of experiences, each of which makes us bigger, even though it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and griefs which we endure help us in our marching onward.”

“If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.”

“So, while the people are indeed supreme over the written Constitution, the spiritual constitution is supreme over them. The French Revolutionists wrote constitutions too—every drunken writer among them tossed off a constitution. Where are they? All vanished. Why? Because they were not in harmony with the constitution of the universe. The power of the Constitution is not dependent on any Government, but on its inherent rightness and practicability.”

“I will build a car for the great multitude. It will be large enough for the family, but small enough for the individual to run and care for. It will be constructed of the best materials, by the best men to be hired, after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise. But it will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one — and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God's great open spaces.”

“The provision of a whole new system of electric generation emancipated industry from the leather belt and line shaft, for it eventually became possible to provide each tool with its own electric motor. This may seem only a detail of minor importance. In fact, modern industry could not be carried out with the belt and line shaft for a number of reasons. The motor enabled machinery to be arranged in the order of the work, and that alone has probably doubled the efficiency of industry, for it has cut out a tremendous amount of useless handling and hauling. The belt and line shaft were also tremendously wasteful – so wasteful indeed that no factory could be really large, for even the longest line shaft was small according to modern requirements. Also high speed tools were impossible under the old conditions – neither the pulleys nor the belts could stand modern speeds. Without high speed tools and the finer steels which they brought about, there could be nothing of what we call modern industry.”

“International financiers are behind all war. They are what is called the international Jew: German-Jews, French-Jews, English-Jews, American-Jews … the Jew is the threat.”

“Jews have always controlled the business (...). The motion picture influence of the United States and Canada (...) is exclusively under the control, moral and financial, of the Jewish manipulators of the public mind.”

“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young.”

“The economic fundamental is labour.”

“You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do.”

“My best friend is one who brings out the best in me”

“Don't find fault, find a remedy; anybody can complain”

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

“Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goals.”

“Vision without execution is just hallucination.”

“When everything seem to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it….”

“It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste”

“Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.”