Henry Ford

The way out of the depression is to start spending and doing things.

The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time.

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

Many people seem to believe that Greenfield Village and the Edison Institute and Museum at Dearborn, with their specimens of earlier type of American life and industry, are just a kind of antiquarian hobby of mine. I do not deny that they have given me a great deal of interest and pleasure. But the project is vastly more than a hobby. It has very definite purposes, and I hope will have results lasting down the years. One purpose is to remind the public who visit it and sometimes there are thousands a day–of how farand how fast we have come in technical progress in the last century or so. If we have come so far and so fast, is it likely that we shall stop now?

Education not just preparation for life, but part if life itself-a continuous art.

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

If your dreams don’t scare you they are too small.

Did I have a problem with lying to get the job? None whatsoever.

Nobody’s ever called me Sir Richard. Occasionally in America, I hear people saying Sir Richard and think there’s some Shakespearean play taking place. But nowhere else anyway.

Should I give up my career at this point in my life… and put all my marbles in Laura’s [Nyro] basket?

Do not spend too much time planning or trying to anticipate and solve problems before they happen. That is just another kind of excuse for procrastination. Until you start, you won’t know where the problems will occur. You won’t have the experience to solve them. Instead, get into action, and solve the problems as they arise.

Depressions aren’t acts of God; like wars, they are the work of a small group of men who profit by them.

Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.

I’ve been making deals all my life.

My friends are people who like building cool stuff. We always have this joke about people who want to just start companies without making something valuable. There’s a lot of that in Silicon Valley.

I always look at it that I work with my employees as opposed to them working for me.

No human wisdom or knowledge could ever be sufficient [for] the duty of superintending the industry of private people … towards the employment most suitable to the interest of the society.

The keystone of successful business is cooperation. Friction retards progress.

If the boss stands in the way of men getting what they earn, he is not fit to be boss.

A market is never saturated with a good product, but it is very quickly saturated with a bad one.

We wish all users of Ford cars to know what they are entitled to.