Henry Ford

Public officials are all right if they stay in their proper sphere and perform their proper functions but when they get greedy for wider scope and more power and money they lose their value and become parasites.

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.

Efficient industry is the sole key to prosperity.

The young people got me interested in aviation. It is part of the motor age. Development is dependent on power.

When you once get an idea in which you believe with all your heart, work it out.

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?

“He who angers you, conquers you.” – Elizabeth Kenny

“You should know our mania for building is stronger than ever. It is a diabolical thing. It consumes money and the more you build, the more you want to build. It’s a sickness like being addicted to alcohol.

Some things have to be believed to be seen.

Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.

Coaching your wife is like trying to baptize a cat.

It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.

The think I remember most about Brooklyn was how much I wanted to get out of Brooklyn.

I thought about writing a poem explaining how when you are lost at sea, even if you are rescued and survive, you never really come back. Then I realized everyone that’s ever been in love would already understand.

Maybe in the 90s or possibly in the next century people will look upon the 80s as the age of masturbation, when it was taken to the limit; that might be all that’s going on right now in a big way.

Do not fear your enemies. The worst they can do is kill you. Do not fear friends. At worst, they may betray you. Fear those who do not care; they neither kill nor betray, but betrayal and murder exists because of their silent consent.

Never be afraid to laugh at yourself, after all, you could be missing out on the joke of the century.

If I may venture to be frank I would say about myself that I was every inch a gentleman …

The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance – it is the illusion of knowledge.

Trees are among the most useful things grown.