Henry Ford

Many people are busy trying to find better ways of doing things that should not have to be done at all. There is no progress in merely finding a better way to do a useless thing.

Trouble with the world today is people don’t go to children enough. I don’t like old people. I stay away from them.

Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.

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.

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.

Much depends on people knowing what opportunity means; it doesn’t mean a silver platter, it oftener means a spade. Self-help means something sterner than ‘help yourself’–reach over and take it.

What’s the quickest way to become a millionaire? Borrow fivers off everyone you meet.

No one should buy on reputation alone. They should come and see it and inspect it, feel it and touch it.

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.

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.

[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.’]

I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information.

There should be rivalry between men and between business.

There are very few men of genius in advertising agencies. But we need all we can find. Almost without exception they are disagreeable. Don’t destroy them. They lay golden eggs.

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

We’ve created a recognisable brand that has the ability to be the Louis Vuitton of our era.

My motto is: Always get even. When somebody screws you, screw them back in spades.

Only one thing makes prosperity, and that is work.

Well, I think that there’s a very thin dividing line between success and failure. And I think if you start a business without financial backing, you’re likely to go the wrong side of that dividing line.

[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.

Like a midwife, I make my living bringing new babies into the world, except that mine are new advertising campaigns.