Henry Ford

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.

In the Ford Motor Company we emphasize service equally with sales.

Machines were devised not to do a man out of a job, but to take the heavy labor from man’s back and place it on the broad back of the machine.

Efficient industry is the sole key to prosperity.

From the start I had my own ideas about how the business should run. I wanted it to benefit everybody who contributed to its success-stockholders, labor and the American public.

If you need a machine and don’t buy it, then you will ultimately find that you have paid for it and don’t have it.

The world is more malleable than you think and it’s waiting for you to hammer it into shape.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Toe: A part of the foot used to find furniture in the dark.

Well, as a kid I did not get Shakespeare. I just never understood it.

A goal is a dream with a finish line.

Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right.

You must demand nothing less than the best of yourself and for yourself. You must tell yourself that it is not wrong to want it all.

Life did not stop, and one had to live.

What I greatly hope for these children everywhere, is a new attitude toward life–free from the gullibility which thinks we can get something for nothing; free from the greed which thinks any permanent good can come of overreaching others; and, above all, expectant of change, so that when life gives them a jolt they will be fully prepared to push on eagerly along new lines.

Prophesy is a good line of business, but it is full of risks.

The point of quotations is that one can use another’s words to be insulting.

You are writing your children’s future with your answers.

It is true that I am often startled and even angered and repulsed by the strange directions and provocative content of new forms that seem to pop up every few months.

My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.

When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.