Henry Ford Quotes

320 Henry Ford Quotes

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[On firing Lee Iacocca] [Henry Ford II] Well, sometimes you just don’t like somebody.
Henry Ford

Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.
Henry Ford

Luck and destiny are the excuses of the world’s failures.
Henry Ford

[On the Detroit Toledo & Ironton railroad owned by Ford] The railroad is really more remarkable for the time honored formulas it neglects to observe than it is for the profits it earns.
Henry Ford

[On the Transporation Act of 1920 when Ford owned the Detroit Toledo & Ironton railroad] The road has earned money for us and would earn more were it not for the fact that an Act of Congress limits the return on our investment to 6 percent. We are limited in our service by the laws conceived in part by ill-informed theorists who cannot understand the real function of profits, and in part by those who see in regulated business the inevitable necessity for banker finance.
Henry Ford

Speculation is only a word covering the making of money out of the manipulation of prices, instead of supplying goods and services.
Henry Ford

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.
Henry Ford

There are two fools in this world. One is the millionaire who thinks that by hoarding money he can somehow accumulate real power, and the other is the penniless reformer who thinks that if only he can take the money from one class and give it to another, all the world’s ills will be cured.
Henry Ford

There are no big problems, there are just a lot of little problems.
Henry Ford

There is one rule for the industrialist and that is: Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible.
Henry Ford



If I had listened to my customers, I would have given them a faster horse.
Henry Ford

There is nothing more likely to be misleading than a field of vision so narrow as to leave out part of the points. It is like seeing the elephant so limitedly as to report only his tails or tusks.
Henry Ford

[Comparing leaves with attitudes] The leaves that stayed longest, that we had learned to associate with stability – those are the leaves that fall before the new leaves appear.
Henry Ford

When the leaves of the strongest tree fall, spring is here.
Henry Ford

The man who brings help with him is always welcome. The world wants help. It needs it. It will reward the man who brings it – whether to a little broom-shop in the alley, or the biggest business in the world.
Henry Ford

[On government inefficiency] If we have 100 men tied up on jobs that can be done by 75, it is not only an inefficient use of human effort, it is also an unfair charge against the public which must pay for the extra 25.
Henry Ford

There are thousands of things waiting to be done in the world.
Henry Ford

If security depends on keeping certain dogs asleep, then it is not security.
Henry Ford

‘The survival of the fittest’ is more than a term of science, it is more than a statement reeking with the sense of universal struggle, it is the declaration of the method of history and the objective of destiny – only the fit do survive.
Henry Ford

Tolerance is possible only to the superior; the lower elements are always intolerant.
Henry Ford



If you see a thing to be done, go and do it. If you cannot do it all, do what you can; you cannot take the fifth step until you have taken the first four.
Henry Ford

Times grow ripe, like everything else; yet many people think they can pick ripe events off green years; which cannot be done any more than ripe apples can be picked in the months when they are green.
Henry Ford

All of us want to slay the giant with one dramatic stroke of our sword. … The giant usually dies from self-generated poisons.
Henry Ford

A great industry is like a human body. If you analyze it closely you will find all sorts of disease germs in it. If you specialize on the individual injustices that may occur within it, you will appear to have gathered such a mass as spells death to any organism or organization. Yet, the industry goes on. Its product is of service to the world.
Henry Ford

Unless we know more about machines and their use, unless we better understand the mechanical portion of life, we cannot have the time to enjoy the trees, and the birds, and the flowers, and the green fields.
Henry Ford

There is some opposition between living the providing the means of living. We waste so much time and energy that we have little left over in which to enjoy ourselves.
Henry Ford

Power and machinery, money and goods, are useful only as they set us free to live. They are but [a] means to an end.
Henry Ford

It is better to be skeptical of all new ideas and to insist upon being shown rather than to rush around in a continuous brainstorm after every new idea. Skepticism, if by that we mean cautiousness, is the balance wheel of civilization.
Henry Ford

Almost any one can think up an idea. The thing that counts is developing it into a practical product.
Henry Ford

The man who calls himself a reformer wants to smash things. He is the sort of man who would tear up a whole shirt because the collar button did not fit the buttonhole. It would never occur to him to enlarge the buttonhole.
Henry Ford



Freedom is the right to work a decent length of time and get a decent living for doing so…
Henry Ford

Business is merely work. Speculation in things already produced – that is not business. It is just more or less respectable graft.
Henry Ford

We cannot live without business and we cannot live without government.
Henry Ford

Labour is the human element which makes the fruitful seasons of the earth useful to men. It is men’s labour that makes the harvest what it is.
Henry Ford

Monopoly is bad for business.
Henry Ford

Money comes naturally as the result of service.
Henry Ford

There is no place in civilization for the idler.
Henry Ford

A blanket does not require much tailoring, but none of us could get much work done if we went around Indian-fashion in blankets.
Henry Ford

What is the use of putting a tremendous force behind a blunt chisel if a light blow on a sharp chisel will do the work?
Henry Ford

Waste is due largely to not understanding what one does, or being careless in the doing of it.
Henry Ford



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