Henry Ford

In teaching the children at Greenfield Village, we are trying to get back some of the solid McGuffey qualities.

I do not believe a man can ever leave his business. He ought to think of it by day and dream of it by night.

Chop your own wood and it will warm you twice.

If you find out what men want and give them that, you are pleasing them. If you find out what is good for them and give them that, you are performing a service. That’s what we are trying to do.

That’s the way to study history-by noting evolutionary processes.

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?

The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people’s fantasies. People may not always think big themselves. but they can get very excited by those who do. That is why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest, the greatest and the most spectacular.

Salesmanship, too, is an art; the perfection of its technique requires study and practice.

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

We do not hire a man’s history, we hire the man.

[on Steve jobs] Our relationship was based almost always on him calling up and asking, ‘Is this a good deal?’ I’m not in his business, and I wasn’t trying to be. I was just a guy who admired him a lot and was flattered he wanted my advice.

Money will ruin the life of any man who treats it like anything but a tool with which to work.

Sometimes your best investments are the ones you don’t make.

I believe in trusting men, not only once but twice – in giving a failure another chance.

My dream was to have a steady job, was not to be on the road, to exist like a guy that goes to work as a mechanic or a carpenter and knows he’s gonna have a job.

What America needs most is aviation.

My definition of an executive’s job is brief and to the point. It is simply this: Getting things done through other people.

Owning a great golf course gives you great power.

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 union organizers are asking us to sit still while it sells our men the jobs that have always been free.

Ninety-nine percent of advertising doesn’t sell much of anything.