Henry Ford

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

When prices go up, business goes down.

As far as competition is concerned, that must continue. But we must learn what competition really is. It is a striving to attain the best. To throttle it would mean to stop all progress. Certain men do not need to compete. They are pioneers.

No unemployment insurance can be compared to an alliance between a man and a plot of land. With one foot in the land, human society is firmly balanced against most economic uncertainties. With a job to supply him with cash, and a plot of land to guarantee him support, the individual is doubly secure. Stocks may fail, but seedtime and harvest do not fail.

The only real security that a man can have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience and ability.

We want to have something of everything-we have types of every sort of wagon and carriage ever used in this country, from the covered wagon of the pioneer to the last style of buggy. We have nearly every type of agricultural instrument, every type of musical instrument, we have all kinds and sorts of furniture and household effects. One of these days the collection will have its own museum at Dearborn, and there we shall reproduce the life of the country in its every age.

Change is vital, improvement the logical form of change.

You can’t tell me you can make any system or country work with low wages and high prices, and high wages with high prices don’t mean anything when the prices eat up the wages and don’t leave anything over.

Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.

I have a theory that the best advertisements come from personal experience. Some of the good ones I have done have really come out of the real experience of my life, and somehow this has come over as true and valid and persuasive.

Work is our sanity, our self-respect, our salvation. The day’s work is the center of everything.

The problem with the bronco is to get on and stay on. This is the problem with the Golden Rule-to understand and apply.

Set exorbitant standards, and give your people hell when they don’t live up to them. There is nothing so demoralizing as a boss who tolerates second rate work.

First and foremost, I’m a real estate person. And that’s what I love the most.

Mr. Edison was comfortably well off-he was not a money maker.

If I had asked them what they had wanted, they would have said a faster horse.

Every man must decide for himself whether he shall master his world or be mastered by it.

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

In Moscow I feel most comfortable. I’m used to four different seasons; it’s difficult for people in London to understand. People brought up in Russia like my kids want to play in the snow.

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.

Only a fool never changes his mind.