Henry Ford

The young people got me interested in aviation. It is part of the motor age. Development is dependent on power.

No one can be helped unless he can be put in the way of helping himself.

You can’t learn in school what the world is going to do next year.

No one will ever get anywhere in this world unless he becomes a teacher, one who can show others how to do things.

You’ve got to teach youngsters the difference between right and wrong, but you shouldn’t try to poke it down their throats. Let them ask the questions and then give them the answers.

What right have you, save service to the world, to think that other men’s labor should contribute to your gains?

I believe in benevolent dictatorship provided I am the dictator.

Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.

The most important word in the vocabulary of advertising is TEST. If you pretest your product with consumers, and pretest your advertising, you will do well in the marketplace.

No matter what his position or experience in life, there is in everyone more latent than developed ability; far more unused than used power.

A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don’t need it.

Businesses that grow by development and improvement do not die.

If you ever have the good fortune to create a great advertising campaign, you will soon see another agency steal it. This is irritating, but don’t let it worry you; nobody has ever built a brand by imitating somebody else’s advertising.

I have no Napoleonic dream. I’m just hard working and pragmatic.

The five separate fingers are five independent units. Close them and the fist multiplies strength. This is organization.

I never get the accountants in before I start up a business. It’s done on gut feeling, especially if I can see that they are taking the mickey out of the consumer.

When prices go up, business goes down.

I foresee the time when industry shall no longer denude the forests which require generations to mature, nor use up the mines which were ages in making, but shall draw its raw material largely from the annual produce of the fields. I am convinced that we shall be able to get out of yearly crops most of the basic materials which we now get from forest and mine.

Good copy can’t be written with tongue in cheek, written just for a living. You’ve got to believe in the product.

I must have had a dozen jobs and I got fired from all of them.

An imitation may be quite successful in its own way, but imitation can never be Success. Success is a first-hand creation.