Henry Kravis

A manufacturer is not through with his customer when a sale is completed. He has then only started with his customer. In the case of an automobile the sale of the machine is only something in the nature of an introduction. If the machine does not give service, then it is better for the manufacturer if he never had the introduction, for he will have the worst of all advertisements-a dissatisfied customer.

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

Businesses that grow by development and improvement do not die.

Our friendship was based on my payouts. That wasn’t a friendship when – as, for example, it’s me, my friends, we are friends for many years, and it doesn’t matter for me what the position is, where they work; we simply are friends. And with Mr. Berezovsky, our friendship was based on my payoffs.

I don’t know the rules of grammar. If you’re trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language they use every day, the language in which they think. We try to write in the vernacular.

The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.

You can’t do this! We have an arrangement! We have a contract!

Advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things.

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

Burdening people with debt is an old deal not a new deal.

Fairs and public displays are the best means we have yet found of showing large numbers of people the real methods of industry.

As members of the Ford Motor organization we are engaged in the production of an article of use for the people of all countries. Our principle is to make our work as profitable for the buyer as for the seller.

We were all young and we were all inventing our careers. I was very close to Jackson, just as I’d been very close to Laura Nyro. With each person I had a unique relationship.

I never get the accountants in before I start up a business. It’s done on gut feeling, especially if I can see that they are taking the mickey out of the consumer.

I think shareholders are the great evil of this modern world.