Henry Ford

Worry is the most wasteful thing in the world.

Little difficulties are made to swell until they fill our horizon while the real big blessings of life are dwindled down to nothing.

I haven’t put a pencil to a piece of paper, working out a problem, in years; I do it in my head.

Mark my word: A combination airplane and motor car is coming.

Of all the follies the elder generation falls victim to this is the most foolish, namely, the constant criticism of the younger element who will not be and cannot be like ourselves because we and they are different tribes produced of different elements in the great spirit of Time.

The world is held together by the mass of honest folk who do their daily tasks, tend their own spot in the world, and have faith that at last the Right will come fully into its own.

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.

What you say in advertising is more important than how you say it.

This is a perverse thing, personally, but I would rather be in the cycle where people are underestimating us. It gives us latitude to go out and make big bets that excite and amaze people.

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

In the Ford Motor Company we emphasize service equally with sales.

[In 1990 on the president of MCA calling and saying ‘We’re going to make you the biggest offer this company has ever made, and I’m going to send it to you by messenger right now.’] It’s 1990. Send me a fax.

A real entrepreneur is somebody who has no safety net underneath them.

It’s not just about being better. It’s about being different. You need to give people a reason to choose your business.

I suspect that many corporations have begun to understand that they have an important role to play in the lives of their communities, and that allocating funds to support local groups helps them discharge that function and also burnish their image.

I was never involved in arms trading. In the Russian Federation, arms trading is the prerogative of the state.

The more predictable the business, the more valuable it is.

Our friendship was based on my payouts. That wasn’t a friendship when – as, for example, it’s me, my friends, we are friends for many years, and it doesn’t matter for me what the position is, where they work; we simply are friends. And with Mr. Berezovsky, our friendship was based on my payoffs.

Work mixed with management becomes not only easier but more profitable. The time is past when anyone can boast about ‘hard work’ without having a corresponding result to show for it.

In New York and Los Angeles, you can throw your car keys to the valet and he parks it. Same in Hong Kong and Singapore, the service is off the scale. In London it’s sub-standard to abysmal.

London has got better as it’s become more international – you only have to look at the quality of the restaurants to see how improved it’s become.

In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.