Henry Ford

Wars are necessary to teach us lessons we seem unable to learn any other way.

Man is a comparative being. Substandard things must go before super-standard things can come.

Much depends on people knowing what opportunity means; it doesn’t mean a silver platter, it oftener means a spade. Self-help means something sterner than ‘help yourself’–reach over and take it.

Worry is the most wasteful thing in the world.

No one loses anything by raising wages as soon as he is able. It has always paid us. Low wages are the most costly any employer can pay. It is like using low-grade material–the waste makes it very expensive in the end. There is no economy in cheap labor or cheap material. The hardest thing I ever had to do was to reduce wages. I think we were the last big company to come to it. Now I am mighty glad that wages are climbing again.

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

The real story of Facebook is just that we’ve worked so hard for all this time. I mean, the real story is actually probably pretty boring, right? I mean, we just sat at our computers for six years and coded.

The highest use of capital is not to make more money, but to make money do more for the betterment of life.

In the long run people are going to buy the cheapest and the best article no matter where it is made.

Sales are contingent upon the attitude of the salesman – not the attitude of the prospect.

Two classes of people lose money; those who are too weak to guard what they have; those who win money by trick. They both lose in the end.

We were all young and we were all inventing our careers. I was very close to Jackson, just as I’d been very close to Laura Nyro. With each person I had a unique relationship.

There is a time and place for all things to be successful. There is fate and destiny and opportunity, and you need all three things in line at the same time.

Without a customer, you don’t have a business, all you have is a hobby.

As betting at the race ring adds neither strength nor speed to the horse, so the exchange of shares in the stock market adds no capital to business, no increase in the production and no purchasing power to the market.

I don’t make deals for the money. I’ve got enough, much more than I’ll ever need. I do it to do it.

If you find out what men want and give them that, you are pleasing them. If you find out what is good for them and give them that, you are performing a service. That’s what we are trying to do.

We decided not to show One Hyde Park til we were 100% ready. A lot of people open the doors too early.

Any business arrangement that is not profitable to the other person will in the end prove unprofitable for you. The bargain that yields mutual satisfaction is the only one that is apt to be repeated.

Nations are great as they are prosperous as they are industrious as they are just.

[On Laura Nyro] I said to Laura ‘You know Laura, I think we should sell your music publishing company. I think right now is the right time you have three songs in the top ten this may never happen again and I think we can get a lot of money for it.’ And I made a deal with Clive Davis to sell Tuna Fish Music for $4 million. And that was a hell of a lot of money in 1969. It made her famous, it made her rich. It got people to listen to her music with her singing.