Henry Ford citations

Page 2

“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.”

“One of the greatest discoveries a person makes, one of their great surprises, is to find they can do what they were afraid they couldn't do.”

“If money is your hope for independence, you will never have it. The only real security that a man can have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience and ability.”

“You say I started out with practically nothing, but that isn't correct. We all start with all there is, it's how we use it that makes things possible.”

“Any man who thinks he is going to be happy and prosperous by letting the government take care of him should take a close look at the American Indian.”

“The whole secret of a successful life is to find out what is one's destiny to do, and then do it.”

“There is no man living who isn't capable of doing more than he thinks he can do.”

“If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person's point of view and see things from that person's angle as well as from your own.”

“success is 99% failure”

“I see no advantage in these new clocks. They run no faster than the ones made 100 years ago.”

“A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.”

“There are three things that grow more precious with age; old wood to burn, old books to read, and old friends to enjoy.”

“Even a mistake may turn out to be the one thing necesary to a worthwhile achievement".”

“Money doesn't make us anyway it just unmasks us.”

“There is joy in work. There is no happiness except in the realization that we have accomplished something.”

“A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.”

“everything comes to him who hustles while he waits.”

“To do more for the world than the world does for you - that is success.”

“The way to learn to do things is to do things. The way to learn a trade is to work at it. Success teaches how to succeed. Begin with the determination to succeed, and the work is half done already.”

“Genius is seldom recognized for what it is: a great capacity for hard work.”

“There is no disgrace in honest failure; there is disgrace in fearing to fail”

“You don't have to hold a position in order to be a leader.”

“An idealist is a person who helps other people to be prosperous.”

“I cannot discover that anyone knows enough to say definitely what is and what is not possible.”

“We try to pay a man what he is worth and we are not inclined to keep a man who is not worth more than the minimum wage.”

“There is one rule for the industrialist and that is: Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible.”

“Givers have to set limits because takers rarely do.”

“You will find men who want to be carried on the shoulders of others, who think that the world owes them a living. They don't seem to see that we must all lift together and pull together.”

“I've never made a flight in an airplane, and I don't know that I'm particularly anxious to. I would, though, like to take a trip in a dirigible. Bring one out here some time, won't you, Doctor Eckener, and give me a ride?”

“Through all the years that I have been in business I have never yet found our business bad as a result of any outside force. It has always been due to some defect in our own company, and whenever we located and repaired that defect our business became good again - regardless of what anyone else might be doing. And it will always be found that this country has nationally bad business when business men are drifting, and that business is good when men take hold of their own affairs, put leadership into them, and push forward in spite of obstacles. Only disaster can result when the fundamental principles of business are disregarded and what looks like the easiest way is taken. These fundamentals, as I see them, are:
(1) To make an ever increasingly large quantity of goods of the best possible quality, to make them in the best and most economical fashion, and to force them out onto the market.
(2) To strive always for higher quality and lower prices as well as lower costs.
(3) To raise wages gradually but continuously B and never to cut them.
(4) To get the goods to the consumer in the most economical manner so that the benefits of low cost production may reach him.
These fundamentals are all summed up in the single word 'service'… The service starts with discovering what people need and then supplying that need according to the principles that have just been given.”