Henry Ford

There is safety in small beginnings and there is unlimited capital in the experience gained by growing.

Profits made out of the distress of the people are always much smaller than profits made out of the most lavish service of the people at the lowest prices that competent management can make possible.

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

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.

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.

No American ought to be compelled to strike for his rights. He ought to receive them naturally, easily, as a matter of course.

[On Calvin Klein asking him ‘Why don’t you call it Geffen Records?’] People in the record business just don’t do that. They come up with names likes Asylum, Capricorn, or Island. [Calvin Klein said if you put your own name on the door ‘You’ll get laid more.’]

Competition whose motive is merely to compete, to drive some other fellow out, never carries very far.

Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving.

I remember flying in, driving down 101 in a cab, and passing by all these tech companies like Yahoo! I remember thinking, ‘Maybe someday we’ll build a company. This probably isn’t it, but one day we will.’

Good copy can’t be written with tongue in cheek, written just for a living. You’ve got to believe in the product.

The other people I don’t take too seriously are the critics-except when they stand in the way of my projects. In my opinion, they mostly write to impress each other, and they’re just as swayed by fashions as anyone else. One week it’s spare glass towers they are praising to the skies. The next week, they’ve rediscovered old, and they’re celebrating detail and ornamentation.

Determine to do some thinking for yourself. Don’t live entirely upon the thoughts of others. Don’t be an automaton.

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

I actually do think you’re seeing this trend towards organizations just caring more about their brand and engaging. And so I think Home Depot will want to humanize itself. I think that’s a lot of why companies are starting blogs, are just giving more insight into what’s going on with them.

Never write an advertisement which you wouldn’t want your family to read. You wouldn’t tell lies to your own wife. Don’t tell them to mine.

…capitalism does live by crises and booms, just as a human being lives by inhaling and exhaling.

Advertising is a business of words, but advertising agencies are infested with men and women who cannot write. They cannot write advertisements, and they cannot write plans. They are helpless as deaf mutes on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera.

Although Mr. Edison was called ‘The Wizard’ of the electrical world and everyone thought that electricity was the coming thing, he actually encouraged me to go with my second car.

On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.

The golden rule for every businessman is this: Put yourself in your customer’s place.