Henry Ford

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.

One needs to be successful in the conventional way to learn just how far away from success it may be.

I wouldn’t have the Presidency or any political office-don’t want anything to do with it nor have politics have anything to do with me.

To do more for the world than the world does for you – that is success.

President Hoover has done everything any one could do to bring about improvement in business and industry. Everything President Hoover has advised or tried to put into effect has been sound.

Chop your own wood and it will warm you twice.

The Model T blazed the way for the motor industry and started the movement for good roads everywhere. It is still the pioneer car in many parts of the world which are just beginning to be motorized.

There’s no better friend to any merchant than a fair competitor.

Hire people who are better than you are, then leave them to get on with it. Look for people who will aim for the remarkable, who will not settle for the routine.

When prices go up, business goes down.

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.

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

In the end, all business operations can be reduced to three words: people, product, and profits. Unless you’ve got a good team, you can’t do much with the other two.

A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts.

Do not primarily train men to work. Train them to serve willingly and intelligently.

You have an idea of the way you think it is, and it’s not that way at all, it’s something else.

It is the service we are not obliged to give that people value most.

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.

Competition is the keen cutting edge of business, always shaving away at costs.

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

[On his first job in the mailroom of William Morris a casting agency] It was the first time in the my life that I thought ‘I can do that.’